6 ms·

Good news (more infrastructure in the critical sphere is always welcome) but the real endgame is buried deep down: > 12. Lawful filtering: Filtering of URLs le

by toyg 5y ago

Good news (more infrastructure in the critical sphere is always welcome) but the real endgame is buried deep down: > 12. Lawful filtering: Filtering of URLs leading to illegal content based on legal requirements applicable in the EU or in national jurisdictions (e.g. based on court orders), in full compliance with EU rules. But yeah, it's the sort of thing that it's better done at EU level rather than in 27 different, weak and uncoordinated ways. Offices and schools would be very happy to use it, I bet.

kiidev 5y ago
What about? > 5. Premium and wholesale services: Provide opt-in paid premium services for enhanced security (e.g. ad hoc filtering, monitoring, 24x7 support), tailored to specific sectorial needs (e.g. cloud, finance, health, transport), as well as wholesale resolution services for other digital service providers, including ISPs and cloud service providers.
- salzig 5y ago
  5. and 12. are really concerning. IMHO the EU should invest in a DNS Infrastructure that is resilient to censoring (copyright or political) and operate it as non profit. Edit: to be clear, non profit doesn't mean it can't charge money, profit shouldn't be a concern/target.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Are we talking about the same EU? The EU does this for censoring and monitoring, not against it - and they're totally open about it too. Google "Zensursula"...
    - salzig 5y ago
      Then the EU shouldn't invest any money. Cause if you can't improve the situation, stop wasting money on it.
      - toyg 5y ago
        From the perspective of public accountability, this is a step forward compared to the current status quo - where some countries implement blacklists and some don't, some are accountable and some aren't, etc etc. The EU dns would then work as public registry of such activities, also clarifying and harmonising the bar for acceptable censorship (i.e. opposition activity in Hungary? Not bannable...).
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - wongarsu 5y ago
      I would expect quite a lot of resistance to monitoring efforts, even if they are paid opt-ins (which will mostly be used by schools and employers, the same way they already use similar services that do the same). Censoring of illegal content is much less controversial, and already happening to various degrees at the ISP provided DNS servers. You can make good arguments for transparency and oversight by the courts, but that's as far as it usually goes. Hard to argue that illegal things should be publicly accessible.
      - 5736uhhdohr 5y ago
        It's not at all hard to argue that illegal things should be publicly accessible. I find it impossible to argue that governments should be able to decide what information is publicly accessible. There is no relationship between legality and morality.
- toyg 5y ago
  I don't see a problem with some commercial element in public services, as long as it's reasonable and transparent. As long as the public mission is still satisfied, it's just a good way to reduce reliance on general taxation. The amount of such services you can provide for DNS is quite limited anyway. Maybe you can guarantee higher QoS on response times where this is critical, but that's about it. Maybe they can make non-EU-based businesses pay to use it.
emteycz 5y ago
> But yeah, it's the sort of thing that it's better done at EU level rather than in 27 different, weak and uncoordinated ways. Offices and schools would be very happy to use it, I bet. No, 27 uncoordinated ways means 27 ways of going around. That's better in this case. No government the size of EU should have control of the internet.
- samhw 5y ago
  For what it's worth, the EU is not a government. There will still be 27 countries implementing it - like browser vendors implementing a spec - and, again much like browser vendors, they won't be doing it in a well-coordinated fashion. It will be rife with <blink>s. (Also, just for future reference, it's _the_ EU. Americans have a habit of doing this, also with the UK, and I don't understand it at all because your country is _the_ US.)
  - emteycz 5y ago
    You're wrong about the EU, the setup you're talking about is long gone - since the Treaty of Lisbon to be specific, ratified over 10 years ago. EU regulations are effective even without any mention in the local law. EU directives must be implemented within the time limit or the state will be sued at the EU court (not local court!) and made to pay fines until it's implemented. Thus, the EU quacks just like a government. > and, again much like browser vendors, they won't be doing it in a well-coordinated fashion. It will be rife with <blink>s Hopefully, but most definitely not simply because "the EU is not a government". It is enough of a government to avert this issue - e.g. see vaccination passports. > (Also, just for future reference, it's _the_ EU. Americans have a habit of doing this, also with the UK, and I don't understand it at all because your country is _the_ US.) I'm Czech, not American. My native language doesn't use "the" or "a" at all. I'll watch my English better.
    - teh_klev 5y ago
      > I'll watch my English better. I think your english is perfectly fine and that "mistake" wasn't worth nitpicking over. We're an international community and we need to let some things go for the sake of maintaining our sanity.
gypsyharlot 5y ago
The world's largest bureaucracy (EU) will continue with its bullying of everyone with different opinions. In a worst case scenario, this won't be optional, and they will cancel everyone with different opinions, like Hungary and Poland.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  What “opinions” do Hungary and Poland hold?
  - Muromec 5y ago
    hating on gays, muslims and separation of judiciary from executive are definitely opinions
    - samhw 5y ago
      An opinion is something that can be represented as a proposition about the world. It's the non-factive superclass of a fact: i.e. the structure of a fact, but not requiring/entailing the property of truth. Hatred is not an opinion, it's an emotion. For more information, have a look at this fantastic Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ludwigwittgenstein/fantastic-ways-to-distinguish-between-sense-and-nonsense https://www.buzzfeed.com/ludwigwittgenstein/fantastic-ways-t...
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    "opinion" is probably the wrong word when we are talking about countries but people in Hungary and Poland seem to favour more nationalistic and conservative politics and have a thing for strong leaders. It's a bit like California v.s. Alabama situation. Also, not limited to Poland and Hungary, it pans along the West v.s. East, so it's like North vs South in the US. For example, EU says you have right to bring your partner to EU. Then Denmark says that you can register a long term relationship and have the full rights without a formal marriage, Poland will say that you need to marry. It also goes beyond the social issues as the strong leaders tend to mangle with the judiciary system to make their ways and EU is really not happy about it. When that happens, the countries get fined and their leaders will bash EU in a similar way like some American politician bash the federal government.
teekert 5y ago
I love DNS based filtering because it is so easy to circumvent. Even nontechie friends I just tell to enable dns-over-https in FireFox. Welcome back TPB (which is DNS blocked in my country).
varispeed 5y ago
Yes they won't have to depend on private companies to suppress inconvenient content. You will probably never learn about many things in the future.
smarx007 5y ago
I am surprised with such sentiments every time I hear them. How do you envision running a server in EU without complying with the EU laws and obeying the court orders?
- sneak 5y ago
  There's a significant stretch between "running a server [...] complying with the EU laws" and using DNS to do mass censorship. Censorship is abhorrent, and mass, government-mandated censorship even moreso. End to end encrypted DNS resolution (via DoH) needs to be widely deployed. Using unencrypted, unauthenticated protocols in 2022 is madness. DNS is closer to Telnet than it is to the modern web.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  The thing is there's not exactly one unified EU legislation. You would need to abide by the laws and regulations of the country hosting your server, yes. But that country may have regulations that are incompatible with EU laws: for example France's data retention laws are illegal by EU standards (like many other human-rights-infringing laws in France). Then of course i can see valid reasons not to obey unjust laws whether that's in Europe or elsewhere.
mschuster91 5y ago
> But yeah, it's the sort of thing that it's better done at EU level rather than in 27 different, weak and uncoordinated ways. Sure, let's give Kaczynski and Orban the keys to censoring LGBT content or regime critical media across the entire EU. Sarcasm aside: any kind of censorship infrastructure will get abused sooner or later. No matter if it's criminals, trolls, religious fundamentalists (particularly where it concerns LGBT matters, sex work or gambling) or plain old wannabe dictators.
- toyg 5y ago
  I reckon the opposite will happen - no single government will be able to implement unreasonable censorship, because there will be a higher bar for accepting blocks. Or are you arguing that Orban and Kaczynski have more control in Bruxelles than at home? Because that's definitely not the case; if anything, they are more isolated at European level than they are in their own countries.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Yes because countries like France or Germany have such a better record when it comes to censorship! /s Germany famously hunted down Indymedia and tor supporters a few years ago, and privacy-friendly ISP Freifunk had to fight its way through constitutional court. France had trials against alleged contributors to self-organized media outlets (from reseaumutu.info federation, more specifically iaata.info instance), had many many films censored (such as Afrique 50 or La bataille d'Alger), and has strong regulations outlawing critiques of police and/or president. Creating a broader power never results in mitigating power abuse. If anything, it helps it foster by piling on layers of abstraction/bureaucracy which diminish accountability in the long run.
5736uhhdohr 5y ago
That doesn't sound like good news at all. Anything that makes the internet easier to censor and control is very bad news.
bradknowles 5y ago
And the next step is that it is mandatory, and they block all other DNS provisioning. And who do the brown shirts then go after next?

by toyg 5y ago

kiidev 5y ago

What about? > 5. Premium and wholesale services: Provide opt-in paid premium services for enhanced security (e.g. ad hoc filtering, monitoring, 24x7 support), tailored to specific sectorial needs (e.g. cloud, finance, health, transport), as well as wholesale resolution services for other digital service providers, including ISPs and cloud service providers.

salzig 5y ago
5. and 12. are really concerning. IMHO the EU should invest in a DNS Infrastructure that is resilient to censoring (copyright or political) and operate it as non profit. Edit: to be clear, non profit doesn't mean it can't charge money, profit shouldn't be a concern/target.
- emteycz 5y ago
  Are we talking about the same EU? The EU does this for censoring and monitoring, not against it - and they're totally open about it too. Google "Zensursula"...
  - salzig 5y ago
    Then the EU shouldn't invest any money. Cause if you can't improve the situation, stop wasting money on it.
    - toyg 5y ago
      From the perspective of public accountability, this is a step forward compared to the current status quo - where some countries implement blacklists and some don't, some are accountable and some aren't, etc etc. The EU dns would then work as public registry of such activities, also clarifying and harmonising the bar for acceptable censorship (i.e. opposition activity in Hungary? Not bannable...).
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    I would expect quite a lot of resistance to monitoring efforts, even if they are paid opt-ins (which will mostly be used by schools and employers, the same way they already use similar services that do the same). Censoring of illegal content is much less controversial, and already happening to various degrees at the ISP provided DNS servers. You can make good arguments for transparency and oversight by the courts, but that's as far as it usually goes. Hard to argue that illegal things should be publicly accessible.
    - 5736uhhdohr 5y ago
      It's not at all hard to argue that illegal things should be publicly accessible. I find it impossible to argue that governments should be able to decide what information is publicly accessible. There is no relationship between legality and morality.
toyg 5y ago
I don't see a problem with some commercial element in public services, as long as it's reasonable and transparent. As long as the public mission is still satisfied, it's just a good way to reduce reliance on general taxation. The amount of such services you can provide for DNS is quite limited anyway. Maybe you can guarantee higher QoS on response times where this is critical, but that's about it. Maybe they can make non-EU-based businesses pay to use it.

emteycz 5y ago

> But yeah, it's the sort of thing that it's better done at EU level rather than in 27 different, weak and uncoordinated ways. Offices and schools would be very happy to use it, I bet. No, 27 uncoordinated ways means 27 ways of going around. That's better in this case. No government the size of EU should have control of the internet.

samhw 5y ago
For what it's worth, the EU is not a government. There will still be 27 countries implementing it - like browser vendors implementing a spec - and, again much like browser vendors, they won't be doing it in a well-coordinated fashion. It will be rife with <blink>s. (Also, just for future reference, it's _the_ EU. Americans have a habit of doing this, also with the UK, and I don't understand it at all because your country is _the_ US.)
- emteycz 5y ago
  You're wrong about the EU, the setup you're talking about is long gone - since the Treaty of Lisbon to be specific, ratified over 10 years ago. EU regulations are effective even without any mention in the local law. EU directives must be implemented within the time limit or the state will be sued at the EU court (not local court!) and made to pay fines until it's implemented. Thus, the EU quacks just like a government. > and, again much like browser vendors, they won't be doing it in a well-coordinated fashion. It will be rife with <blink>s Hopefully, but most definitely not simply because "the EU is not a government". It is enough of a government to avert this issue - e.g. see vaccination passports. > (Also, just for future reference, it's _the_ EU. Americans have a habit of doing this, also with the UK, and I don't understand it at all because your country is _the_ US.) I'm Czech, not American. My native language doesn't use "the" or "a" at all. I'll watch my English better.
  - teh_klev 5y ago
    > I'll watch my English better. I think your english is perfectly fine and that "mistake" wasn't worth nitpicking over. We're an international community and we need to let some things go for the sake of maintaining our sanity.

gypsyharlot 5y ago

The world's largest bureaucracy (EU) will continue with its bullying of everyone with different opinions. In a worst case scenario, this won't be optional, and they will cancel everyone with different opinions, like Hungary and Poland.

ricardobeat 5y ago
What “opinions” do Hungary and Poland hold?
- Muromec 5y ago
  hating on gays, muslims and separation of judiciary from executive are definitely opinions
  - samhw 5y ago
    An opinion is something that can be represented as a proposition about the world. It's the non-factive superclass of a fact: i.e. the structure of a fact, but not requiring/entailing the property of truth. Hatred is not an opinion, it's an emotion. For more information, have a look at this fantastic Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ludwigwittgenstein/fantastic-ways-to-distinguish-between-sense-and-nonsense https://www.buzzfeed.com/ludwigwittgenstein/fantastic-ways-t...
- mrtksn 5y ago
  "opinion" is probably the wrong word when we are talking about countries but people in Hungary and Poland seem to favour more nationalistic and conservative politics and have a thing for strong leaders. It's a bit like California v.s. Alabama situation. Also, not limited to Poland and Hungary, it pans along the West v.s. East, so it's like North vs South in the US. For example, EU says you have right to bring your partner to EU. Then Denmark says that you can register a long term relationship and have the full rights without a formal marriage, Poland will say that you need to marry. It also goes beyond the social issues as the strong leaders tend to mangle with the judiciary system to make their ways and EU is really not happy about it. When that happens, the countries get fined and their leaders will bash EU in a similar way like some American politician bash the federal government.

teekert 5y ago

I love DNS based filtering because it is so easy to circumvent. Even nontechie friends I just tell to enable dns-over-https in FireFox. Welcome back TPB (which is DNS blocked in my country).

varispeed 5y ago

Yes they won't have to depend on private companies to suppress inconvenient content. You will probably never learn about many things in the future.

smarx007 5y ago

I am surprised with such sentiments every time I hear them. How do you envision running a server in EU without complying with the EU laws and obeying the court orders?

sneak 5y ago
There's a significant stretch between "running a server [...] complying with the EU laws" and using DNS to do mass censorship. Censorship is abhorrent, and mass, government-mandated censorship even moreso. End to end encrypted DNS resolution (via DoH) needs to be widely deployed. Using unencrypted, unauthenticated protocols in 2022 is madness. DNS is closer to Telnet than it is to the modern web.
southerntofu 5y ago
The thing is there's not exactly one unified EU legislation. You would need to abide by the laws and regulations of the country hosting your server, yes. But that country may have regulations that are incompatible with EU laws: for example France's data retention laws are illegal by EU standards (like many other human-rights-infringing laws in France). Then of course i can see valid reasons not to obey unjust laws whether that's in Europe or elsewhere.

mschuster91 5y ago

> But yeah, it's the sort of thing that it's better done at EU level rather than in 27 different, weak and uncoordinated ways. Sure, let's give Kaczynski and Orban the keys to censoring LGBT content or regime critical media across the entire EU. Sarcasm aside: any kind of censorship infrastructure will get abused sooner or later. No matter if it's criminals, trolls, religious fundamentalists (particularly where it concerns LGBT matters, sex work or gambling) or plain old wannabe dictators.

toyg 5y ago
I reckon the opposite will happen - no single government will be able to implement unreasonable censorship, because there will be a higher bar for accepting blocks. Or are you arguing that Orban and Kaczynski have more control in Bruxelles than at home? Because that's definitely not the case; if anything, they are more isolated at European level than they are in their own countries.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Yes because countries like France or Germany have such a better record when it comes to censorship! /s Germany famously hunted down Indymedia and tor supporters a few years ago, and privacy-friendly ISP Freifunk had to fight its way through constitutional court. France had trials against alleged contributors to self-organized media outlets (from reseaumutu.info federation, more specifically iaata.info instance), had many many films censored (such as Afrique 50 or La bataille d'Alger), and has strong regulations outlawing critiques of police and/or president. Creating a broader power never results in mitigating power abuse. If anything, it helps it foster by piling on layers of abstraction/bureaucracy which diminish accountability in the long run.

5736uhhdohr 5y ago

That doesn't sound like good news at all. Anything that makes the internet easier to censor and control is very bad news.

bradknowles 5y ago

And the next step is that it is mandatory, and they block all other DNS provisioning. And who do the brown shirts then go after next?