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Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11

507 points by quantumwannabe 4y ago

Zhenya 4y ago
If EU really wants to curb risk to children: -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse -provide clinics and medications for people with this mental disease However, that’s not really the goal here is it…
- detritus 4y ago
  > -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse I'm sure some dark comic (Boyle, Gervais?) made a joke along these lines, but presumably the problem with this tack is that you end up with more dead children? Biology, consensus-morality-abiding or otherwise, is a hard thing to ignore and little befearing the meagre laws of man in those that suffer from it. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't see 'sterner sentencing' having much truck here, as much as I'd personally mete the death sentence for anyone raping kids or.. well, anyone.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    It was Louis CK. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Fy8zVp63w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Fy8zVp63w
    - detritus 4y ago
      Ah, 'Thank you'! Yes that's the skit I remembered, and by golly, as fucked up an idea as it is, he's entirely right. "I don't know what to do with that information. I don't have way to apply that to anything that's helpful", indeed.
      - Zhenya 4y ago
        He’s not right. Lowering penalties makes it more acceptable to society. I think we do agree that allowing child abuse is a net negative for society.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I guess the usual child abuser doesn't think along the line that they do it for potential 10 years but not for 25 years in prison. While I believe that the schedule of kids is vastly overstuffed with senseless crap, more eyes on the target probably helps identifying cases of abuse. That means funding child care and schools. But that is more expensive and doesn't have positive side effects like a law for content control. UvdL is known to have had and probably still has many private gatherings to discuss policy in a privileged group. Maybe we should ask her what her secrecy was about and where the chat protocol is from these meetings. I suspect more criminal behavior than in the average internet chat.
- truthwhisperer 4y ago
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > raise the penalties That never works. Raising the risks of being caught does work, but it costs money. > people with this mental disease Not all such people are ill; there are different reasons people get involved in child-porn. Some of them are just shitty people; some are traumatised; some are simply ignorant.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    So throw the baby out with the bathwater? Point 1 does work as shown by cities giving up and letting petty criminals run wild (see san francisco). Point 2: so no help for anyone? I'm not sure what you're even saying here because it's just naysaying and not really offering any potential solutions.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      I wasn't advocating no penalties; I was saying that increasing the penalties doesn't work (unless you are a politician trying to get re-elected). And I wasn't saying 'no clinics'; I was griping about the term "mental illness". Not all bad behaviour is the result of a psychiatric disorder.
reedjosh 4y ago
Governments are not our friends. Ostensibly they're supposed to be tools to check powerful interests. In reality, the larger the governing body the more they work for the powerful. The EU passes a bunch of token privacy regulations, but then tries to force mass surveillance. It's all a control scheme. Never believe the government are the 'good guys.'
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Needlessly cynical. Human organizations of all kinds have problems, including governments. If you don't believe that government can ever function in a manner intended by the people it nominally represents, then everything is hopeless, since we (the vast majority of people) were also screwed over without representative government. I don't agree that one needs to conclude this. You can believe in government at the same time as believing that it sometimes (often!) screws up and/or is the subject of regulatory capture.
  - reedjosh 4y ago
    > since we (the vast majority of people) were also screwed over without representative government. Without government we at least had choice. I think you're needlessly cynical. Humans can organize themselves quite well when they have maximum choice as individuals. The robber barons of the early nineteenth century were bolstered by governments--not hindered. Governments have always been corrupt.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      > Without government we at least had choice. I don't consider "give me your stuff or I beat you" a choice.
      - vinyl7 4y ago
        Only difference is now the government says "give me your stuff or I beat you" rather than your neighbor
cntrl 4y ago
> This will require them to monitor and scan the communications of citizens en masse – even if they are still securely encrypted end-to-end so far. how does this work though? Or do they want to force communication services to have backdoor into their encryption technology?
- rightbyte 4y ago
  You could program the clients to look for blacklisted URLs or picture hashes or whatever and still have end to end encryption I guess. Would defeat the point though and the eavesdropping could just aswell be on the server with no end to end encryption.
- vaylian 4y ago
  Afaik the legislation will force communication service providers (WhatsApp, MSN Messenger, ...) to scan any chat message for illegal material before it is encrypted and sent. The scanning happens against a known database of data fingerprints.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    So what happens with self-hosted or decentralized services? Like matrix.
    - vaylian 4y ago
      Depends entirely on how the law itself will be phrased. Maybe there is an exception to services below a certain size. But I don't expect the politicians behind this initiative to have matrix on the radar or even understand decentralized chat protocols.
Havoc 4y ago
Ah the classic "But think of the children" appeal... Anybody know how this will impact proton?
- ResNet 4y ago
  It shouldn't (directly) affect ProtonMail — they're based in Switzerland, which is not an EU member and thus not bound by EU law. That said, it's possible that this could be implemented in a GDPR-like fashion, where non-EU companies offering services to EU persons would be required to follow these laws. It's also worth noting that the EU and Switzerland do have some bilateral agreements [1] for single market access, though, which involves it adopting some required EU law to facilitate this access; however, that should not be relevant for this specific issue. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/cs/MEMO_16_3185 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/cs/MEMO_1...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kornhole 4y ago
  I don't think Switzerland is subject to this but I could be wrong. I setup my own mail and xmpp server to be safe. I recommend others to do the same. Yunohost.org makes it easy.
- TheFreim 4y ago
  I don't appreciate the way privacy advocates attack the "think of the children" cliche. It comes off as a flippant rejection of the importance of protecting the vulnerable. The issue isn't the justification, it's that the ends don't justify the means. Sometimes you can't take an action even if you perceive it'll have a good result (spying on people [immoral means] to protect children [moral end]).
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    But it's a completely fake argument in these scenarios. It's always invoked when you want to do something different to infringe on personal liberties. If anything it's the people abusing vulnerable groups for their agenda are at fault for the argument becoming laughable, however I think most people in this discussion are able to differentiate fake "think of the children" from actually protecting vulnerable groups.
joebob42 4y ago
I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.
- fabatka 4y ago
  I never understand this apparent motive of "elected officials getting power hungry". How would this legislation make the people in the EU Commission more powerful? Am I just lacking imagination?
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    This legislation means the EC gets to decide what is allowed and what's not in private communications. It always starts with child pornography, because everybody finds it abhorrent. But once you open that door...
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I mean, intercepting private business communications about say, factory openings or closings, would put the people with that information in a position to make large amounts of money by buying or selling property in those areas. There are dozens of similar examples that don't require much imagination to envisage. Blackmail material on politicians, insider knowledge on energy transactions and plans, advance warning on populist protests against EU policies, etc. Just look at the history of any mass surveillance state to see how that works out in practice. The East German STASI is a relevant example, and there are others one could think of as well. Recommended watching: "The Lives of Others".
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      > I mean, intercepting private business communications about say, factory openings or closings, would put the people with that information in a position to make large amounts of money by buying or selling property in those areas. Like the US did with Airbus in the echelon scandal even before the pervasive surveillance that came in after 9/11. Just saying this is not a remote "worst case" scenario but a real-world one.
HidyBush 4y ago
The moment this shit passes is the moment I straight up tell people I will not discuss about anything meaningful in our private online chats and if they want to talk we will have to arrange with proven FOSS tools.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  I think there has never been good reason to believe that most proprietary tools are properly encrypted at all. The most common form of this is that while the messages may indeed be end-to-end encrypted, the keys are stored in the cloud, which allows them to be given to the authorities upon request, perhaps secretly.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    A real concern. I suspect the chain of trust is already undermined by states to a large degree. At least that should be assumed if secure communication is required. Still, policy decision like this should be rejected and used as an example of bad policy crafting in the future. It isn't the first deed of UvdL on this topic.
sixhobbits 4y ago
Have to jump through a few links to get to the 'protest' part. > Protest now by contacting the responsible EU Commissioners! Experience shows that a phone call is more effective than e-mails or letters. Officially, the planned obligation for messaging and chat control is called “legislation to effectively tackle child sexual abuse online”. > If an office tries to redirect you to the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs (Directorate-General for Home Affairs), point out that all EU Commissioners vote on draft legislation and can raise concerns at an early stage. * EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ms Johansson (lead responsible): Tel. +32-229-50170, E-Mail cab-johansson-contact@ec.europa.eu * EU Commission President Ms von der Leyen: Tel. +32-229-56070, E-Mail ec-president-vdl@ec.europa.eu * Executive Vice President for a Europe for the Digital Age, Ms Vestager: tTel. +32-229-55136, E-Mail margrethe-vestager-contact@ec.europa.eu * EU Internal Market Commissioner Mr Breton, Tel. +32-229-90200, E-Mail cab-breton-contact@ec.europa.eu * Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Ms Jourova: Tel. +32-229-55144, E-Mail cab-jourova-contact@ec.europa.eu * Vice President for Promoting our European Way of Life, Mr. Schinas: Tel. +32-229-60524, E-Mail cab-schinas-contact@ec.europa.eu * Justice Commissioner Mr Reynders, Tel. +32-229-50900, E-Mail cab-reynders-contact@ec.europa.eu [from https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...]
- harabat 4y ago
  For those who won't read the article: it provides a few ways to protest [0] (contact Commissioners, request media to cover this issue, get active on social media) and offers a list of arguments [1] (such policies don't work against CSAM but make it worse, while better/more targeted methods are being ignored). If anyone has experience calling to protest, could they share it here? Otherwise, the simplest course of action might be to copy-paste the arguments given in [1] into an email addressed to the parties mentioned in the parent comment. [0]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co... [1]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#AdditionalInformation https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
  - 4y ago
woliveirajr 4y ago
What's that "%ef%bf%bc" at the end of the link ?
- rhdunn 4y ago
  UTF-8 encoding of U+FFFC ("Object Replacement Character"). [1] https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FFFC https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FFFC
- gruez 4y ago
  firefox shows it as %uFFFC, which corresponds to this character https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffc/index.htm https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffc/index.htm
- perihelions 4y ago
  Some obscure unicode character U+FFFC, represented in the url bar as the %-escaped sequence of the bytes of its utf-8 encoding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_(Unicode_block) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_(Unicode_block) No idea where it comes from, but it randomly peppers some people's comments and posts for no obvious reason: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%EF%BF%BC https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%EF%BF%BC I'll paste one here between double quotes: " ". To me, it shows up variously as either "[obj]" or as invisible whitespace. edit: It doesn't work -- HN removes that unicode character. (It filters out large ranges, particularly emojis). So how the heck did it get in those peoples' comments?
  - dang 4y ago
    Most likely those comments were posted before we started filtering out those char ranges.
- shmde 4y ago
  From StackOverflow- These look like corrupted URLs being inserted by a piece of Malware/Adware called "Adpeak"[1] [1]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25222973/weird-characters-in-url#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20%EF%BF,the%20representation%20method%20you%20choose https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25222973/weird-character....
mildmotive 4y ago
These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in the world has huge problems with sex trafficking, rape and prostitution. And you guessed it, state officials are involved. All these cameras and this online surveillance didn’t make a dent to the social rot that China is suffering from. In fact, this moral (/s) state is running concentration camps, and is justifying it. Mass-surveillance is a form of power-transfer from the majority of people to a select few. When you, as individuals, as families, as communities, as the people lack power, you’ll be less able to prevent your children from falling prey to government officials. Instead of facing a weak outcast, you’re facing an individual that’s linked to your government. > This spying attack on our private messages and photos by error-prone algorithms is a giant step towards a Chinese-style surveillance state. Well said. I’d like to add that even if the system was free from errors, it’s terrible.
- neither_color 4y ago
  It's interesting how EU regulators build good will through stunts like mandating USB-C or forcing open the App Store and GDPR protections and then turn around and do stuff like this.
  - jonas21 4y ago
    It all seems pretty consistent to me. The EU commission wants more power for itself and less autonomy for companies, particularly tech giants, having failed to create any of its own.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    It's almost like there are multiple people and groups in EU administration, with different goals and priorities.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
JacobiX 4y ago
Imagine the cost of all the compliance procedures that a tech company should implement in the EU: GDPR, Digital Markets Act, and maybe in the future: Chat control. I think that the EU is putting barriers to entry that can backfire and harm its own tech companies, even if the initial plan is limiting the influence of US corporations for digital services.
- importantmsg 4y ago
  EU is economically a wasteland. Almost every traded company is 50 years old or more and derived from old national monopolies. European Commission efforts at "strengthening the union" are desperate attempts to reap even larger monopoly rents on the government account, to offset the secular decline.
rektide 4y ago
I really really look forward to a world where internet service providers simply stop bowing to shitty unhealthy demands of sovereign powers. I (admittedly, a no-one) have no intent to respect this & every intent to eacallate my efforts to help people fight off pernicious piece of shit legislation. On the plus side, the pushes towards hosting-it-yourself keep going up. The fact that all our rights online are granted by way of vast corporate intermediaries is systematically broken & vile, allows endless encroachment g degredation of base liberies. We can keep fighting battles, but starting to assert more natural rights, making this an ask not against service providers but against private persons, is how to tip this war back against the ever encroaching monstrous survelliance regime.
- rsync 4y ago
  "I really really look forward to a world where internet service providers simply stop bowing to shitty unhealthy demands of sovereign powers." rsync.net is not an ISP, but … way ahead of you there: https://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt https://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt Every Monday morning for 16 years.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > Every Monday morning for 16 years Not wishing to seem defeatist, but if the Feds pitched up and threatened you with "bad things" if you didn't a) bow to their demands and b) keep signing the coming weeks' canary messages, how would we [strangers] be expected to detect this?
- visarga 4y ago
  > making this an ask not against service providers but against private persons, Good luck convincing a divided mass of people to do the same thing.
oxff 4y ago
For the longest time I have been treating every communication that's not private, in-person with someone I know as essentially public (iow. this changes almost nothing to me, I consider anything online more-or-less public, under surveillance etc already).
- andai 4y ago
  Most in-person conversations today take place near internet-connected microphones (and more recently, integrated with smart-assistant technology specifically designed to collect your voice data).
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    In person conversation that occurs in a pre-approved 10x10 meter anechoeic chamber without any microphones. Yeah. It's that difficult.
denton-scratch 4y ago
This looks like a scare-story. Firstly, the EU produces directives and regulations; it doesn't produce "laws". Secondly, the phrase "child pornography" is in quotes, as if there's no such thing. There is such a thing. Thirdly, the imputed "law" requires service providers to scan encrypted messages. That's impossible, unless the proposal is to ban properly-encrypted messages. If that were the proposal, then surely that's what should be in the headline? Like, I already assume anything that isn't properly encrypted is going to be scanned by someone.
- JacobiX 4y ago
  The EU has many types of legal acts and the European Commission is responsible for planning and proposing law. Also EU regulations are legal acts that apply automatically to all EU countries without needing to be transposed into national law. For scanning encrypted messages, they can be scanned on device before encryption, like Apple’s approach to CSAM.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    My "device" is a laptop. You say "like Apple", but I believe Apple's CSAM is unique - nothing else tries to scan your messages between keyboard and encryption.
    - JacobiX 4y ago
      I think the term « device » is a bit misleading. I should have used client side instead. It doesn’t need to scan your messages between keyboard and encryption, the application handles your messages in plaintext and it can scan them without needing any decryption. The encryption is done just before sending the messages.
      - denton-scratch 4y ago
        Well, I did say "properly encrypted". An encryption scheme that, by design, shares information from my plaintext with a third party, isn't "proper" in my book. That's phony encryption. [Edit] I evidently don't understand your remark. If some "encryption app" processes the plaintext before it is encrypted, isn't it processing plaintext between the keyboard and the encryption?
jcranberry 4y ago
So the draft hasn't been published? Have there been public committee meetings? I'd like to know more about the actual content of the bill.
FpUser 4y ago
These pathetic fucks should stop pretending to worry about children. What they really want is subversive populace living under the constant threat of being made criminals. FFS China, Russia, India etc are proud of you.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  In Russia it has started with "child porno" blocking. Fast forward 10 years, the list of things your web site may be blocked for is unbound. So it's not just slippery slope, rather an euphemism.
srcreigh 4y ago
Here's the uncommon opinion. Google/FB, by extension US government, already performs mass surveillance. There are actually 2 solutions to this problem. One is stopping Google/FB. The other is making mass surveillance more common, lessening the impact of mass surveillance. In that sense non-US govs taking mass surveillance is a boon to power balances and competition amongst nations and economies. Does this opinion have any issues? what are they?
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Neither Google nor Facebook has built concentration camps in the past. The same can not be said about state actors. Thus, private companies, especially those in some other country, are inherently more trustworthy than a local government body could ever be.
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    Yeah. IMO a good strategy is to rely on companies in a non-friendly country. For example, if you are in a Western country, use a Russian company for stuff that you have to outsource to a 3rd party. If you are in Russia or China, use Google and Facebook all you want.
  - lapinot 4y ago
    Apart from your point being a complete non-sequitur (an example doesn't prove anything), you ought to look at the history of IG Farben (aka Bayer, BASF and other). Or how privatisation is getting to the carceral industry (thank you USA for giving the world the signal that this is the way to go). Or how Total and others high-stakes companies are mixed up with private mercenaries and dealing with terrorists in the middle east. Or how child labour is conveniently hidden behind layers of subcontracting in the electronic and fashion industry. Private companies are all over the place in the facist avant-garde (and this is very relevant today). At least i can vote, inquiry and have theoretically have some means of insight and control into my state, because afaik i don't have these powers, not even in theory, for private megacorps (which in fact have quite much in common with states).
  - JCWasmx86 4y ago
schroeding 4y ago
I'm just tired, to be honest. Even if we prevent this exact law (proposal), a few years down the line there probably will be another attempt. And again, and again. Just like it happend with the mandatory data retention laws for ISPs. I really try to stay optimistic on this topic, but it's really hard. :/
- orestarod 4y ago
  Life is struggle, and I do not mean that in a pessimist way. If someone wants to take something from you, you just have to resist. Over and over and over, forever. Your life is meant to end anyway, no reason to give up sooner than that. It is of course logical to not have the energy and time to do everything and be everywhere. But whatever you do you keep moving.
- fuckcensorship 4y ago
  I have come to accept that the only long-term solution to digital privacy must be in the form of technology. No amount of vigilance and democracy will be able to keep the wolves away forever.
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    It has not really been a technological problem for a long time. End to end encryption is mature technology. Human institutions require humans to function, and humans are easily swayed based on circumstances in a way that make them willing to simply hand over their rights.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      And it's not just the humans that can easily be swayed, their hardware and software too. The mathematically perfect and formally verified messaging software is usually sandwiched between a bazillion layers of questionable technology.
- JasonFruit 4y ago
  It's kind of like when a website begs for permission to use your location over and over even though you say no every time, until you screw up and say yes — and then you never hear about it again. These ideas arise over and over until one makes it through, and then we have lost that bit of liberty for good.
deleted 4y ago
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orwin 4y ago
Ok, i'm not defending this, but as i might have a bit more insight on how the EU actually work, i will share my limited knowledge. The commission is the European executive power. It is a mostly unelected body. The parliament is the one you vote for if you do vote during the european elections The council is composed by representative of the head of state from the 27 countries. Once a law is drafted by the European commission (i don't think they can have the idea themselve btw, they just help draft the proposition to try to make it pass through the european court, but i believe they are not the originators of the proposition. 90% sure i'd say), it can follow two procedures: either the ordinary (also called codecision procedure) or the special (consultation procedure). The second case rarely happen, and is limited right now to trade laws basically. So the law we're talking about will have to follow the ordinary procedure. This procedure will set this law proposition in front of the parliament. The parliament will either accept or modify (cannot abandon the law that fast sadly). Then the european council will decide if they agree on the text. If they do not, they either reject it or they modify it (yes, i know) and send it to the parliament a second time. Once again review, modifications, and, if not enough support, rejection. This will certainly end the proposition here. If it is not rejected but simply modified, then the council will debate on this. Any government can choose to stop and/or reject the text at this point. I think there is one more step if the text isn't rejected yet but i'm not exactly sure what this step entails (i assume a special commission between the EU parliament and the countries that did not agree to the text/that push the text) It is interesting to have this information, but keep indignation low. I don't believe this will pass step 3.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > i don't think they can have the idea themselve btw Actually the European Commission is exactly where EU legislation comes from. It probably doesn't come from the commissioners themselves; they're mostly ex-politicians who are too unpopular and incompetent to get elected in their home countries. But those commissioners control the EU civil service; it's those bureaucrats that produce these ideas. As you say, the ordinary procedure is that the proposal is then passed to the toothless Parliament; and I think it then goes to the Council of Ministers to be passed. The Parliament can pass it back to the Commission for reconsideration, and that can happen several times. I don't know how often that happens; I'd guess not often.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
This seems to be contrary to GDPR, and possibly might not fly for a country like -say- Germany.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  GDPR mainly forbids abusing data for your own purposes. It probably allows abusing it for the government through law enforcement cooperation.
13415 4y ago
How is this law supposed to work with text encryption? Write text, encrypt, copy to clipboard, paste into chat app? Will such encryption applications be prohibited? That seems unenforcable, these apps are everywhere, I've even written one with symmetric encryption myself.
- codeguro 4y ago
  It doesn’t. You cannot legislate math. You cannot change the laws of physics either. These so called “laws” will do absolutely nothing to stop or even deter an committed criminal from so much as sharing child porn. It’s completely unenforceable. Public key encryption is even more powerful than symmetric encryption because it gives everyone the ability to establish a shared secret completely out in the open, effectively securing communications over insecure networks. Complete strangers without ever having to meet in person can send secret messages in a manner they can guarantee no one else can read and no one else could forge.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    Of course you can legislate math. For example, the only law that matters in Australia is the law of Australia[0]. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...
- ultra_nick 4y ago
  Governments frequently ban encryption for private citizens to "prevent them from sharing child porn".
  - codeguro 4y ago
    It’s completely uneffective.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Make it illegal to have them on "app stores" and they will be inaccessible to 95% of the plebs. The remaining who use free software are those who care about privacy and pedos.
whiplash451 4y ago
Is protonmail robust against this?
GaylordTuring 4y ago
In theory (and in practice today), I’m strongly against this. However, I see a future where you will have to choose between mass surveillance or something close to extinction. I might be wrong, but as technology progress, it seems almost inevitable that a single individual can do more and more damage. An amount of damage it took half an army to achieve a couple of hundred years ago, one individual can do today with the help of a bomb, a plane or a machine gun. What happens the day that a few number of individuals can build a super virus (already possible for a few, but it will become more common), nuclear bomb or, heck, create a black hole in their basement? If that day comes, it doesn’t matter how strongly I hold the principle that everybody should have the right to privacy; I will gladly welcome our new AI surveillance overlords just to stay alive.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  I mean, just based on evidence it seems like not many people are that crazy, and the ones who are are not in the state of mind for very well made plans. Already it would be easy to strap a pipe bomb with sharapnel to a drone and blow it up anywhere, but that hasnt happened. https://www.boredpanda.com/story-radioactive-boy-scout-david-hahn/ https://www.boredpanda.com/story-radioactive-boy-scout-david... most everything is really doable if you want to cause some damage. i think any ai surveillance overlord will be only on the premise of danger and it will be very overblown
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I am close to a similar conclusion. Sufficiently determined individual can already do a lot of damage using easily accessible tools. Without looking very far, I can point to 'car attacks' in Canada or London. And despite that ease of access to a tool of mass death, despite clear polarization of societies to near hysterical levels, actual crazies appear to make a small fraction of the population; a very visible fraction thanks to the media exposure, but a fraction nonetheless. Most people appear to want one thing: that the day ahead of them is just like the day before.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Yes. This kind of scenario is really frightening. It's why we need to expand colonies off world. There isn't much to add except that I've had the exact same thought several times before.
SiempreViernes 4y ago
I went three indirections down and I still can't find any actual quotes or even summaries of concrete proposals, so I'm surprised how many people can confidently judge that these unexplained proposals are a dumpster fire solely on the basis that they aim to precent child sexual abuse material... The most specific thing I found was a linked document that laid out three possible legislation options, all in very loose language, of which one was an entirely voluntary system. Found from here https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12726-Fighting-child-sexual-abuse-detection-removal-and-reporting-of-illegal-content-online_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
- xyzal 4y ago
  I tried to find the proposal as well, without success.
- feanaro 4y ago
  > solely on the basis that they aim to precent child sexual abuse material... Solely on the basis of having to undermine end-to-end encryption in order to even begin working. Always use the most charitable interpretation of other people's arguments.
- jka 4y ago
  Here's one regulatory measure that's enforced already and seems to fit within the criteria being described: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj (agreed, it would be nice to have direct links to the enacted and proposed regulations to compare and understand the language used)
  - pimterry 4y ago
    'Enforced' isn't the right word for that legislation - it's a derogation, meaning it's removing rules, not creating them. Specifically, that regulation gives service providers a temporary legal mechanism to continue to scan their own traffic for CSAM, if and only if they want to do so, without breaking the law due to GDPR etc (which otherwise made doing so arguably illegal). It just re-legalized the scanning that service providers were doing voluntarily before GDPR, and which they're doing regardless outside the EU anyway.
SN76477 4y ago
A free society must tolerate a percentage of crime. If not, they are not free.
kvetching 4y ago
Complete and total invasion of privacy. They always choose the most egregious crime to push through a cecession of rights. If you oppose this, you are supporting pedophiles. But fuck them. Don't let them gaslight you. There are countless broken laws that could be caught if only they could see our data. How long until they force Google or Apple to report someone to the authorities if their GPS says they are travelling 100mph on a road. How long until there is AI that can use your biometrics to determine if you are too impaired to drive?
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > How long until there is AI that can use your biometrics to determine if you are too impaired to drive? That's an actual requirement in US vehicles in a few years. https://nypost.com/2021/11/15/bidens-infrastructure-bill-to-mandate-anti-drunk-driving-tech-in-cars/ https://nypost.com/2021/11/15/bidens-infrastructure-bill-to-... > “To ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles,” the bill says in summing up the findings of Congressional research. > “Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall issue a final rule prescribing a Federal motor vehicle safety standard … that requires passenger motor vehicles manufactured after the effective date of that standard to be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology,”
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ravar 4y ago
  Think about all the american politicians who visited jeff epstiens island and then backed bills to allegedly fight pedophilia.
  - belter 4y ago
    Not only politicians... "Friendly Reminder That Bill Gates Took The Lolita Express Four Years After Epstein Was A Registered Sex Offender" https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/bill-gates-took-lolita-express-four-years-jeffrey-epstein-registered-sex-offender https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/bill-gates-took-lolita-exp...
samuelizdat 4y ago
The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.
eointierney 4y ago
Nope. And I say that as a committed european and general approver of the EU. This is daft and contrary to fundamental human rights but as is so often the case in such matters it points towards the obvious solution. Do not rely on third party services for human rights. In other words self-host. Yes self-hosting is tedious and error-prone. It also means I am the only individual running daft but compliant algorithms on my data, and that's enough. If I witness criminality I am already obliged to perform my civic duties. I really, truly, utterly, neither require nor desire some twerp in a pink shirt pushing new marketing analysis methodologies on the enforcers of an data analysis regime legislated poorly by dementocrats. So, yeah, nope.
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  Aren't you still subject to these laws even if you're self-hosted?
  - eointierney 4y ago
    Yes, but I get to choose the algorithms and their implementation, and can return such data as I see fit, within the limits of the law
m12k 4y ago
Ugh, the EU should be enshrining the right to privacy as a human right, and instead we get this garbage.
fredgrott 4y ago
Hmm I wonder did any politician realize that their credit card transactions also are legal to scan and spy on using the same damn law? maybe someone should point that out to them?
pier25 4y ago
This plan is useless. In this day and age it's trivial to create a system for private communication that works outside the mainstream apps.
- tmalsburg2 4y ago
  Yes, it's so very obviously useless for the stated purpose that you've got wonder why they want it so badly.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  When citizens start working around the law (if it passes), the forces who pushed for the law will start going after "unregulated" app stores and even websites that implement unfiltered chat / picture sending services. Perhaps that was their end goal all along.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
In the past few years, every shit done to internet freedoms in Russia (mass surveillance, censorship, blocking, etc) was done under the pretense of fighting terrorism or protecting children (don't you want to protect children, you monsters!). Then, of course, it was used to suppress political opposition and dissidents. This will happen in EU too, if it'll pass. Have wrong views on immigration/abortion/vaccination/economy/gender/sexuality? Your citizen rights after suspended, bank accounts frozen, kids taken away, etc. It is imperative to stop such initiatives in their infancy.
f38zf5vdt 4y ago
One thing I don't understand is how this could even be enforced? You could mandate it in controlled ecosystems but without a disconnection from the global internet it would have as much a chance of prevailing as the US did in the original crypto wars.
buzzwords 4y ago
This is a typical way for unpopular laws to pass. Pretend it's to save kids, to spread democracy or to whatever else you really care about.
aborsy 4y ago
The interesting thing about EU is that, because it’s a bureaucratic dictatorship, it can force it (worse, citizens are mostly obedient). So it’s particularly dangerous. Imagine France orders this! It’s not like Apple responding to consumers’ opinion.
- Hakashiro 4y ago
  > dictatorship Any source?
- jhrmnn 4y ago
  Dictatorship means total authority over a domain. EU is so very far from that. If anything it’s the opposite of dictatorship. The federal EU institutions are mostly toothless with respect to the nation states.
  - native_samples 4y ago
    The EU is a partially constructed dictatorship. Within the domains delegated to it in the treaties, it has total power without voter accountability (the most voters can do is elect MEPs who slow things down a bit). Also in some areas where the EU has effectively seized power without a treaty change, this is also true e.g. corporate tax law. In some areas like health and defense it has failed (so far) to take powers, and so the usual democratic mechanisms at the state level are mostly still working. So I think you're not really disagreeing with aborsy, unless by "domain" you mean exclusively physical domains.
orangetuba 4y ago
I am not surprised. The EU consists of a bunch of bullies that force their views on member countries. Abide, or be sanctioned and bullied into compliance. Leaders of members countries are being bought to encourage membership. And when the people vote against it, there will be a new vote next year. And once you've joined, you can't leave out of fear of sanctions.
- ivolimmen 4y ago
  You have a really negative view on the EU. No you can leave the EU, like England did. We did not sanctioned them. It's not a smart move but it's what they wanted. Going forward we should join hands more not less. What is happening now with the war against Ukraine you really see the power of working together. Something we should do more .
dang 4y ago
This falls into the category of a bill proposal, or maybe not even that, since it seems to be just a paragraph announcing a forthcoming proposal? For a substantive HN thread, it's probably better to wait until there's something actual to discuss. For better and/or worse, proposed bills usually don't come to much (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bills%20propos&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mantenpanther 4y ago
Fight this!
t0bia_s 4y ago
Of course it has nothing to do with effective search for child porn. They should search for criminals in dark web, not in emails. Seriously, how many abusers would be so dumb to send those pictures by email. It is same story again and again. Applying collective guilt was always terrible for society. And it is pure principle to implement totalitarian practices.
anthk 4y ago
- QTox for messaging. - Thunderbird+Enigmail or ClawsMail+GPG for email. - I2PD + mail.i2p account and general posting over NNTP and light web browsing. - NNCPGO for the worst case + "sneakernet" with encrypted USB drivers. http://www.nncpgo.org/ http://www.nncpgo.org/
toffi-fee 4y ago
Stupid question: Wouldnʼt it be alright if an open source messenger scans messages locally against a secret word list and only sends it to police if there's a hit, otherwise only send it to the recipient with the usual end-to-end encryption? The secret word list would need to be curated and digitally signed by several parties, including data security advocates to ensure that it doesn't simply contain the entire dictionary.
- vletal 4y ago
  It's like online voting. It works as long as the government does not have a malicious intent of staying in power indefinitely. Then the secret word list might include stuff like "free speech" or "Uighur" and the world would go to hell.
  - toffi-fee 4y ago
    That's why I mentioned the multiple parties. But I understand your point. It would just be the next step for them to sneak in all kinds of words.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      We're not just talking about words here, though. You have to ask yourself: * Who do I trust to look at the pictures in the government database? * Who does the government trust to look at these pictures? * Who would even be willing to look at these pictures? These are probably disjoint sets, leading to a very empty intersection. Unfortunately, the logical impossibility of a government implementing a system that citizens should be happy with is not a barrier to it implementing some other system which it claims is good enough.
- pseudo0 4y ago
  That's the Chinese approach: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-has-function-block-political-keywords-2022-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-ha... Also, having a secret, local wordlist is a challenge. Eg. What is stopping someone from testing every possible one-word message, using the reporting functionality as an oracle?
alecmuffett 4y ago
Analysis thread, beginning with link to full-text PDF of draft law: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1524066299600683008 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1524066299600683008

If EU really wants to curb risk to children: -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse -provide clinics and medications for people with this mental disease However, that’s not really the goal here is it…

detritus 4y ago
> -significantly raise the penalty for sexual child abuse I'm sure some dark comic (Boyle, Gervais?) made a joke along these lines, but presumably the problem with this tack is that you end up with more dead children? Biology, consensus-morality-abiding or otherwise, is a hard thing to ignore and little befearing the meagre laws of man in those that suffer from it. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't see 'sterner sentencing' having much truck here, as much as I'd personally mete the death sentence for anyone raping kids or.. well, anyone.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  It was Louis CK. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Fy8zVp63w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Fy8zVp63w
  - detritus 4y ago
    Ah, 'Thank you'! Yes that's the skit I remembered, and by golly, as fucked up an idea as it is, he's entirely right. "I don't know what to do with that information. I don't have way to apply that to anything that's helpful", indeed.
    - Zhenya 4y ago
      He’s not right. Lowering penalties makes it more acceptable to society. I think we do agree that allowing child abuse is a net negative for society.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I guess the usual child abuser doesn't think along the line that they do it for potential 10 years but not for 25 years in prison. While I believe that the schedule of kids is vastly overstuffed with senseless crap, more eyes on the target probably helps identifying cases of abuse. That means funding child care and schools. But that is more expensive and doesn't have positive side effects like a law for content control. UvdL is known to have had and probably still has many private gatherings to discuss policy in a privileged group. Maybe we should ask her what her secrecy was about and where the chat protocol is from these meetings. I suspect more criminal behavior than in the average internet chat.
truthwhisperer 4y ago
denton-scratch 4y ago
> raise the penalties That never works. Raising the risks of being caught does work, but it costs money. > people with this mental disease Not all such people are ill; there are different reasons people get involved in child-porn. Some of them are just shitty people; some are traumatised; some are simply ignorant.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  So throw the baby out with the bathwater? Point 1 does work as shown by cities giving up and letting petty criminals run wild (see san francisco). Point 2: so no help for anyone? I'm not sure what you're even saying here because it's just naysaying and not really offering any potential solutions.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    I wasn't advocating no penalties; I was saying that increasing the penalties doesn't work (unless you are a politician trying to get re-elected). And I wasn't saying 'no clinics'; I was griping about the term "mental illness". Not all bad behaviour is the result of a psychiatric disorder.

reedjosh 4y ago

Governments are not our friends. Ostensibly they're supposed to be tools to check powerful interests. In reality, the larger the governing body the more they work for the powerful. The EU passes a bunch of token privacy regulations, but then tries to force mass surveillance. It's all a control scheme. Never believe the government are the 'good guys.'

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Needlessly cynical. Human organizations of all kinds have problems, including governments. If you don't believe that government can ever function in a manner intended by the people it nominally represents, then everything is hopeless, since we (the vast majority of people) were also screwed over without representative government. I don't agree that one needs to conclude this. You can believe in government at the same time as believing that it sometimes (often!) screws up and/or is the subject of regulatory capture.
- reedjosh 4y ago
  > since we (the vast majority of people) were also screwed over without representative government. Without government we at least had choice. I think you're needlessly cynical. Humans can organize themselves quite well when they have maximum choice as individuals. The robber barons of the early nineteenth century were bolstered by governments--not hindered. Governments have always been corrupt.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    > Without government we at least had choice. I don't consider "give me your stuff or I beat you" a choice.
    - vinyl7 4y ago
      Only difference is now the government says "give me your stuff or I beat you" rather than your neighbor

cntrl 4y ago

> This will require them to monitor and scan the communications of citizens en masse – even if they are still securely encrypted end-to-end so far. how does this work though? Or do they want to force communication services to have backdoor into their encryption technology?

rightbyte 4y ago
You could program the clients to look for blacklisted URLs or picture hashes or whatever and still have end to end encryption I guess. Would defeat the point though and the eavesdropping could just aswell be on the server with no end to end encryption.
vaylian 4y ago
Afaik the legislation will force communication service providers (WhatsApp, MSN Messenger, ...) to scan any chat message for illegal material before it is encrypted and sent. The scanning happens against a known database of data fingerprints.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  So what happens with self-hosted or decentralized services? Like matrix.
  - vaylian 4y ago
    Depends entirely on how the law itself will be phrased. Maybe there is an exception to services below a certain size. But I don't expect the politicians behind this initiative to have matrix on the radar or even understand decentralized chat protocols.

Havoc 4y ago

Ah the classic "But think of the children" appeal... Anybody know how this will impact proton?

ResNet 4y ago
It shouldn't (directly) affect ProtonMail — they're based in Switzerland, which is not an EU member and thus not bound by EU law. That said, it's possible that this could be implemented in a GDPR-like fashion, where non-EU companies offering services to EU persons would be required to follow these laws. It's also worth noting that the EU and Switzerland do have some bilateral agreements [1] for single market access, though, which involves it adopting some required EU law to facilitate this access; however, that should not be relevant for this specific issue. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/cs/MEMO_16_3185 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/cs/MEMO_1...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kornhole 4y ago
I don't think Switzerland is subject to this but I could be wrong. I setup my own mail and xmpp server to be safe. I recommend others to do the same. Yunohost.org makes it easy.
TheFreim 4y ago
I don't appreciate the way privacy advocates attack the "think of the children" cliche. It comes off as a flippant rejection of the importance of protecting the vulnerable. The issue isn't the justification, it's that the ends don't justify the means. Sometimes you can't take an action even if you perceive it'll have a good result (spying on people [immoral means] to protect children [moral end]).
- solarkraft 4y ago
  But it's a completely fake argument in these scenarios. It's always invoked when you want to do something different to infringe on personal liberties. If anything it's the people abusing vulnerable groups for their agenda are at fault for the argument becoming laughable, however I think most people in this discussion are able to differentiate fake "think of the children" from actually protecting vulnerable groups.

joebob42 4y ago

I don't understand who wants this. does any of their actual constituency want it? Or is it literally just the actual elected officials getting power hungry? Stuff like abortion, etc where I don't really understand the other side. I've at least met real people who are pro life. I've never met the people who want these clownish surveillance things but they keep coming up anyways.

fabatka 4y ago
I never understand this apparent motive of "elected officials getting power hungry". How would this legislation make the people in the EU Commission more powerful? Am I just lacking imagination?
- jaywalk 4y ago
  This legislation means the EC gets to decide what is allowed and what's not in private communications. It always starts with child pornography, because everybody finds it abhorrent. But once you open that door...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I mean, intercepting private business communications about say, factory openings or closings, would put the people with that information in a position to make large amounts of money by buying or selling property in those areas. There are dozens of similar examples that don't require much imagination to envisage. Blackmail material on politicians, insider knowledge on energy transactions and plans, advance warning on populist protests against EU policies, etc. Just look at the history of any mass surveillance state to see how that works out in practice. The East German STASI is a relevant example, and there are others one could think of as well. Recommended watching: "The Lives of Others".
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    > I mean, intercepting private business communications about say, factory openings or closings, would put the people with that information in a position to make large amounts of money by buying or selling property in those areas. Like the US did with Airbus in the echelon scandal even before the pervasive surveillance that came in after 9/11. Just saying this is not a remote "worst case" scenario but a real-world one.

HidyBush 4y ago

The moment this shit passes is the moment I straight up tell people I will not discuss about anything meaningful in our private online chats and if they want to talk we will have to arrange with proven FOSS tools.

alwayslikethis 4y ago
I think there has never been good reason to believe that most proprietary tools are properly encrypted at all. The most common form of this is that while the messages may indeed be end-to-end encrypted, the keys are stored in the cloud, which allows them to be given to the authorities upon request, perhaps secretly.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  A real concern. I suspect the chain of trust is already undermined by states to a large degree. At least that should be assumed if secure communication is required. Still, policy decision like this should be rejected and used as an example of bad policy crafting in the future. It isn't the first deed of UvdL on this topic.

sixhobbits 4y ago

Have to jump through a few links to get to the 'protest' part. > Protest now by contacting the responsible EU Commissioners! Experience shows that a phone call is more effective than e-mails or letters. Officially, the planned obligation for messaging and chat control is called “legislation to effectively tackle child sexual abuse online”. > If an office tries to redirect you to the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs (Directorate-General for Home Affairs), point out that all EU Commissioners vote on draft legislation and can raise concerns at an early stage. * EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ms Johansson (lead responsible): Tel. +32-229-50170, E-Mail cab-johansson-contact@ec.europa.eu * EU Commission President Ms von der Leyen: Tel. +32-229-56070, E-Mail ec-president-vdl@ec.europa.eu * Executive Vice President for a Europe for the Digital Age, Ms Vestager: tTel. +32-229-55136, E-Mail margrethe-vestager-contact@ec.europa.eu * EU Internal Market Commissioner Mr Breton, Tel. +32-229-90200, E-Mail cab-breton-contact@ec.europa.eu * Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Ms Jourova: Tel. +32-229-55144, E-Mail cab-jourova-contact@ec.europa.eu * Vice President for Promoting our European Way of Life, Mr. Schinas: Tel. +32-229-60524, E-Mail cab-schinas-contact@ec.europa.eu * Justice Commissioner Mr Reynders, Tel. +32-229-50900, E-Mail cab-reynders-contact@ec.europa.eu [from https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...]

harabat 4y ago
For those who won't read the article: it provides a few ways to protest [0] (contact Commissioners, request media to cover this issue, get active on social media) and offers a list of arguments [1] (such policies don't work against CSAM but make it worse, while better/more targeted methods are being ignored). If anyone has experience calling to protest, could they share it here? Otherwise, the simplest course of action might be to copy-paste the arguments given in [1] into an email addressed to the parties mentioned in the parent comment. [0]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co... [1]: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#AdditionalInformation https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
- 4y ago

woliveirajr 4y ago

What's that "%ef%bf%bc" at the end of the link ?

rhdunn 4y ago
UTF-8 encoding of U+FFFC ("Object Replacement Character"). [1] https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FFFC https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+FFFC
gruez 4y ago
firefox shows it as %uFFFC, which corresponds to this character https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffc/index.htm https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffc/index.htm
perihelions 4y ago
Some obscure unicode character U+FFFC, represented in the url bar as the %-escaped sequence of the bytes of its utf-8 encoding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_(Unicode_block) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_(Unicode_block) No idea where it comes from, but it randomly peppers some people's comments and posts for no obvious reason: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%EF%BF%BC https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%EF%BF%BC I'll paste one here between double quotes: " ". To me, it shows up variously as either "[obj]" or as invisible whitespace. edit: It doesn't work -- HN removes that unicode character. (It filters out large ranges, particularly emojis). So how the heck did it get in those peoples' comments?
- dang 4y ago
  Most likely those comments were posted before we started filtering out those char ranges.
shmde 4y ago
From StackOverflow- These look like corrupted URLs being inserted by a piece of Malware/Adware called "Adpeak"[1] [1]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25222973/weird-characters-in-url#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20%EF%BF,the%20representation%20method%20you%20choose https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25222973/weird-character....

mildmotive 4y ago

These tyrants have to be stopped. A tyrannical government is far more dangerous to people, including children than your regular criminal. Ironically, by giving the state too much power and therefore increasing the symptoms of corruption, we allow the same sort of crimes to be practiced by corrupt state officials with little means for people enact accountability. China, the country with the most mass-surveillance in the world has huge problems with sex trafficking, rape and prostitution. And you guessed it, state officials are involved. All these cameras and this online surveillance didn’t make a dent to the social rot that China is suffering from. In fact, this moral (/s) state is running concentration camps, and is justifying it. Mass-surveillance is a form of power-transfer from the majority of people to a select few. When you, as individuals, as families, as communities, as the people lack power, you’ll be less able to prevent your children from falling prey to government officials. Instead of facing a weak outcast, you’re facing an individual that’s linked to your government. > This spying attack on our private messages and photos by error-prone algorithms is a giant step towards a Chinese-style surveillance state. Well said. I’d like to add that even if the system was free from errors, it’s terrible.

neither_color 4y ago
It's interesting how EU regulators build good will through stunts like mandating USB-C or forcing open the App Store and GDPR protections and then turn around and do stuff like this.
- jonas21 4y ago
  It all seems pretty consistent to me. The EU commission wants more power for itself and less autonomy for companies, particularly tech giants, having failed to create any of its own.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  It's almost like there are multiple people and groups in EU administration, with different goals and priorities.
- squarefoot 4y ago

JacobiX 4y ago

Imagine the cost of all the compliance procedures that a tech company should implement in the EU: GDPR, Digital Markets Act, and maybe in the future: Chat control. I think that the EU is putting barriers to entry that can backfire and harm its own tech companies, even if the initial plan is limiting the influence of US corporations for digital services.

importantmsg 4y ago
EU is economically a wasteland. Almost every traded company is 50 years old or more and derived from old national monopolies. European Commission efforts at "strengthening the union" are desperate attempts to reap even larger monopoly rents on the government account, to offset the secular decline.

rektide 4y ago

I really really look forward to a world where internet service providers simply stop bowing to shitty unhealthy demands of sovereign powers. I (admittedly, a no-one) have no intent to respect this & every intent to eacallate my efforts to help people fight off pernicious piece of shit legislation. On the plus side, the pushes towards hosting-it-yourself keep going up. The fact that all our rights online are granted by way of vast corporate intermediaries is systematically broken & vile, allows endless encroachment g degredation of base liberies. We can keep fighting battles, but starting to assert more natural rights, making this an ask not against service providers but against private persons, is how to tip this war back against the ever encroaching monstrous survelliance regime.

rsync 4y ago
"I really really look forward to a world where internet service providers simply stop bowing to shitty unhealthy demands of sovereign powers." rsync.net is not an ISP, but … way ahead of you there: https://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt https://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt Every Monday morning for 16 years.
- logifail 4y ago
  > Every Monday morning for 16 years Not wishing to seem defeatist, but if the Feds pitched up and threatened you with "bad things" if you didn't a) bow to their demands and b) keep signing the coming weeks' canary messages, how would we [strangers] be expected to detect this?
visarga 4y ago
> making this an ask not against service providers but against private persons, Good luck convincing a divided mass of people to do the same thing.

oxff 4y ago

For the longest time I have been treating every communication that's not private, in-person with someone I know as essentially public (iow. this changes almost nothing to me, I consider anything online more-or-less public, under surveillance etc already).

andai 4y ago
Most in-person conversations today take place near internet-connected microphones (and more recently, integrated with smart-assistant technology specifically designed to collect your voice data).
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  In person conversation that occurs in a pre-approved 10x10 meter anechoeic chamber without any microphones. Yeah. It's that difficult.

denton-scratch 4y ago

This looks like a scare-story. Firstly, the EU produces directives and regulations; it doesn't produce "laws". Secondly, the phrase "child pornography" is in quotes, as if there's no such thing. There is such a thing. Thirdly, the imputed "law" requires service providers to scan encrypted messages. That's impossible, unless the proposal is to ban properly-encrypted messages. If that were the proposal, then surely that's what should be in the headline? Like, I already assume anything that isn't properly encrypted is going to be scanned by someone.

JacobiX 4y ago
The EU has many types of legal acts and the European Commission is responsible for planning and proposing law. Also EU regulations are legal acts that apply automatically to all EU countries without needing to be transposed into national law. For scanning encrypted messages, they can be scanned on device before encryption, like Apple’s approach to CSAM.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  My "device" is a laptop. You say "like Apple", but I believe Apple's CSAM is unique - nothing else tries to scan your messages between keyboard and encryption.
  - JacobiX 4y ago
    I think the term « device » is a bit misleading. I should have used client side instead. It doesn’t need to scan your messages between keyboard and encryption, the application handles your messages in plaintext and it can scan them without needing any decryption. The encryption is done just before sending the messages.
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Well, I did say "properly encrypted". An encryption scheme that, by design, shares information from my plaintext with a third party, isn't "proper" in my book. That's phony encryption. [Edit] I evidently don't understand your remark. If some "encryption app" processes the plaintext before it is encrypted, isn't it processing plaintext between the keyboard and the encryption?

jcranberry 4y ago

So the draft hasn't been published? Have there been public committee meetings? I'd like to know more about the actual content of the bill.

FpUser 4y ago

These pathetic fucks should stop pretending to worry about children. What they really want is subversive populace living under the constant threat of being made criminals. FFS China, Russia, India etc are proud of you.

thriftwy 4y ago
In Russia it has started with "child porno" blocking. Fast forward 10 years, the list of things your web site may be blocked for is unbound. So it's not just slippery slope, rather an euphemism.

srcreigh 4y ago

Here's the uncommon opinion. Google/FB, by extension US government, already performs mass surveillance. There are actually 2 solutions to this problem. One is stopping Google/FB. The other is making mass surveillance more common, lessening the impact of mass surveillance. In that sense non-US govs taking mass surveillance is a boon to power balances and competition amongst nations and economies. Does this opinion have any issues? what are they?

DocTomoe 4y ago
Neither Google nor Facebook has built concentration camps in the past. The same can not be said about state actors. Thus, private companies, especially those in some other country, are inherently more trustworthy than a local government body could ever be.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Yeah. IMO a good strategy is to rely on companies in a non-friendly country. For example, if you are in a Western country, use a Russian company for stuff that you have to outsource to a 3rd party. If you are in Russia or China, use Google and Facebook all you want.
- lapinot 4y ago
  Apart from your point being a complete non-sequitur (an example doesn't prove anything), you ought to look at the history of IG Farben (aka Bayer, BASF and other). Or how privatisation is getting to the carceral industry (thank you USA for giving the world the signal that this is the way to go). Or how Total and others high-stakes companies are mixed up with private mercenaries and dealing with terrorists in the middle east. Or how child labour is conveniently hidden behind layers of subcontracting in the electronic and fashion industry. Private companies are all over the place in the facist avant-garde (and this is very relevant today). At least i can vote, inquiry and have theoretically have some means of insight and control into my state, because afaik i don't have these powers, not even in theory, for private megacorps (which in fact have quite much in common with states).
- JCWasmx86 4y ago

schroeding 4y ago

I'm just tired, to be honest. Even if we prevent this exact law (proposal), a few years down the line there probably will be another attempt. And again, and again. Just like it happend with the mandatory data retention laws for ISPs. I really try to stay optimistic on this topic, but it's really hard. :/

orestarod 4y ago
Life is struggle, and I do not mean that in a pessimist way. If someone wants to take something from you, you just have to resist. Over and over and over, forever. Your life is meant to end anyway, no reason to give up sooner than that. It is of course logical to not have the energy and time to do everything and be everywhere. But whatever you do you keep moving.
fuckcensorship 4y ago
I have come to accept that the only long-term solution to digital privacy must be in the form of technology. No amount of vigilance and democracy will be able to keep the wolves away forever.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  It has not really been a technological problem for a long time. End to end encryption is mature technology. Human institutions require humans to function, and humans are easily swayed based on circumstances in a way that make them willing to simply hand over their rights.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    And it's not just the humans that can easily be swayed, their hardware and software too. The mathematically perfect and formally verified messaging software is usually sandwiched between a bazillion layers of questionable technology.
JasonFruit 4y ago
It's kind of like when a website begs for permission to use your location over and over even though you say no every time, until you screw up and say yes — and then you never hear about it again. These ideas arise over and over until one makes it through, and then we have lost that bit of liberty for good.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

orwin 4y ago

Ok, i'm not defending this, but as i might have a bit more insight on how the EU actually work, i will share my limited knowledge. The commission is the European executive power. It is a mostly unelected body. The parliament is the one you vote for if you do vote during the european elections The council is composed by representative of the head of state from the 27 countries. Once a law is drafted by the European commission (i don't think they can have the idea themselve btw, they just help draft the proposition to try to make it pass through the european court, but i believe they are not the originators of the proposition. 90% sure i'd say), it can follow two procedures: either the ordinary (also called codecision procedure) or the special (consultation procedure). The second case rarely happen, and is limited right now to trade laws basically. So the law we're talking about will have to follow the ordinary procedure. This procedure will set this law proposition in front of the parliament. The parliament will either accept or modify (cannot abandon the law that fast sadly). Then the european council will decide if they agree on the text. If they do not, they either reject it or they modify it (yes, i know) and send it to the parliament a second time. Once again review, modifications, and, if not enough support, rejection. This will certainly end the proposition here. If it is not rejected but simply modified, then the council will debate on this. Any government can choose to stop and/or reject the text at this point. I think there is one more step if the text isn't rejected yet but i'm not exactly sure what this step entails (i assume a special commission between the EU parliament and the countries that did not agree to the text/that push the text) It is interesting to have this information, but keep indignation low. I don't believe this will pass step 3.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> i don't think they can have the idea themselve btw Actually the European Commission is exactly where EU legislation comes from. It probably doesn't come from the commissioners themselves; they're mostly ex-politicians who are too unpopular and incompetent to get elected in their home countries. But those commissioners control the EU civil service; it's those bureaucrats that produce these ideas. As you say, the ordinary procedure is that the proposal is then passed to the toothless Parliament; and I think it then goes to the Council of Ministers to be passed. The Parliament can pass it back to the Commission for reconsideration, and that can happen several times. I don't know how often that happens; I'd guess not often.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

This seems to be contrary to GDPR, and possibly might not fly for a country like -say- Germany.

solarkraft 4y ago
GDPR mainly forbids abusing data for your own purposes. It probably allows abusing it for the government through law enforcement cooperation.

13415 4y ago

How is this law supposed to work with text encryption? Write text, encrypt, copy to clipboard, paste into chat app? Will such encryption applications be prohibited? That seems unenforcable, these apps are everywhere, I've even written one with symmetric encryption myself.

codeguro 4y ago
It doesn’t. You cannot legislate math. You cannot change the laws of physics either. These so called “laws” will do absolutely nothing to stop or even deter an committed criminal from so much as sharing child porn. It’s completely unenforceable. Public key encryption is even more powerful than symmetric encryption because it gives everyone the ability to establish a shared secret completely out in the open, effectively securing communications over insecure networks. Complete strangers without ever having to meet in person can send secret messages in a manner they can guarantee no one else can read and no one else could forge.
- ronsor 4y ago
  Of course you can legislate math. For example, the only law that matters in Australia is the law of Australia[0]. [0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathematics-dont-apply-here-says-australian-pm/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...
ultra_nick 4y ago
Governments frequently ban encryption for private citizens to "prevent them from sharing child porn".
- codeguro 4y ago
  It’s completely uneffective.
alwayslikethis 4y ago
Make it illegal to have them on "app stores" and they will be inaccessible to 95% of the plebs. The remaining who use free software are those who care about privacy and pedos.

whiplash451 4y ago

Is protonmail robust against this?

GaylordTuring 4y ago

In theory (and in practice today), I’m strongly against this. However, I see a future where you will have to choose between mass surveillance or something close to extinction. I might be wrong, but as technology progress, it seems almost inevitable that a single individual can do more and more damage. An amount of damage it took half an army to achieve a couple of hundred years ago, one individual can do today with the help of a bomb, a plane or a machine gun. What happens the day that a few number of individuals can build a super virus (already possible for a few, but it will become more common), nuclear bomb or, heck, create a black hole in their basement? If that day comes, it doesn’t matter how strongly I hold the principle that everybody should have the right to privacy; I will gladly welcome our new AI surveillance overlords just to stay alive.

thatguy0900 4y ago
I mean, just based on evidence it seems like not many people are that crazy, and the ones who are are not in the state of mind for very well made plans. Already it would be easy to strap a pipe bomb with sharapnel to a drone and blow it up anywhere, but that hasnt happened. https://www.boredpanda.com/story-radioactive-boy-scout-david-hahn/ https://www.boredpanda.com/story-radioactive-boy-scout-david... most everything is really doable if you want to cause some damage. i think any ai surveillance overlord will be only on the premise of danger and it will be very overblown
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I am close to a similar conclusion. Sufficiently determined individual can already do a lot of damage using easily accessible tools. Without looking very far, I can point to 'car attacks' in Canada or London. And despite that ease of access to a tool of mass death, despite clear polarization of societies to near hysterical levels, actual crazies appear to make a small fraction of the population; a very visible fraction thanks to the media exposure, but a fraction nonetheless. Most people appear to want one thing: that the day ahead of them is just like the day before.
unethical_ban 4y ago
Yes. This kind of scenario is really frightening. It's why we need to expand colonies off world. There isn't much to add except that I've had the exact same thought several times before.

SiempreViernes 4y ago

I went three indirections down and I still can't find any actual quotes or even summaries of concrete proposals, so I'm surprised how many people can confidently judge that these unexplained proposals are a dumpster fire solely on the basis that they aim to precent child sexual abuse material... The most specific thing I found was a linked document that laid out three possible legislation options, all in very loose language, of which one was an entirely voluntary system. Found from here https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12726-Fighting-child-sexual-abuse-detection-removal-and-reporting-of-illegal-content-online_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

xyzal 4y ago
I tried to find the proposal as well, without success.
feanaro 4y ago
> solely on the basis that they aim to precent child sexual abuse material... Solely on the basis of having to undermine end-to-end encryption in order to even begin working. Always use the most charitable interpretation of other people's arguments.
jka 4y ago
Here's one regulatory measure that's enforced already and seems to fit within the criteria being described: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj (agreed, it would be nice to have direct links to the enacted and proposed regulations to compare and understand the language used)
- pimterry 4y ago
  'Enforced' isn't the right word for that legislation - it's a derogation, meaning it's removing rules, not creating them. Specifically, that regulation gives service providers a temporary legal mechanism to continue to scan their own traffic for CSAM, if and only if they want to do so, without breaking the law due to GDPR etc (which otherwise made doing so arguably illegal). It just re-legalized the scanning that service providers were doing voluntarily before GDPR, and which they're doing regardless outside the EU anyway.

SN76477 4y ago

A free society must tolerate a percentage of crime. If not, they are not free.

kvetching 4y ago

Complete and total invasion of privacy. They always choose the most egregious crime to push through a cecession of rights. If you oppose this, you are supporting pedophiles. But fuck them. Don't let them gaslight you. There are countless broken laws that could be caught if only they could see our data. How long until they force Google or Apple to report someone to the authorities if their GPS says they are travelling 100mph on a road. How long until there is AI that can use your biometrics to determine if you are too impaired to drive?

Syonyk 4y ago
> How long until there is AI that can use your biometrics to determine if you are too impaired to drive? That's an actual requirement in US vehicles in a few years. https://nypost.com/2021/11/15/bidens-infrastructure-bill-to-mandate-anti-drunk-driving-tech-in-cars/ https://nypost.com/2021/11/15/bidens-infrastructure-bill-to-... > “To ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles,” the bill says in summing up the findings of Congressional research. > “Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall issue a final rule prescribing a Federal motor vehicle safety standard … that requires passenger motor vehicles manufactured after the effective date of that standard to be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology,”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ravar 4y ago
Think about all the american politicians who visited jeff epstiens island and then backed bills to allegedly fight pedophilia.
- belter 4y ago
  Not only politicians... "Friendly Reminder That Bill Gates Took The Lolita Express Four Years After Epstein Was A Registered Sex Offender" https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/bill-gates-took-lolita-express-four-years-jeffrey-epstein-registered-sex-offender https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/bill-gates-took-lolita-exp...

samuelizdat 4y ago

The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.

eointierney 4y ago

Nope. And I say that as a committed european and general approver of the EU. This is daft and contrary to fundamental human rights but as is so often the case in such matters it points towards the obvious solution. Do not rely on third party services for human rights. In other words self-host. Yes self-hosting is tedious and error-prone. It also means I am the only individual running daft but compliant algorithms on my data, and that's enough. If I witness criminality I am already obliged to perform my civic duties. I really, truly, utterly, neither require nor desire some twerp in a pink shirt pushing new marketing analysis methodologies on the enforcers of an data analysis regime legislated poorly by dementocrats. So, yeah, nope.

Teknoman117 4y ago
Aren't you still subject to these laws even if you're self-hosted?
- eointierney 4y ago
  Yes, but I get to choose the algorithms and their implementation, and can return such data as I see fit, within the limits of the law

m12k 4y ago

Ugh, the EU should be enshrining the right to privacy as a human right, and instead we get this garbage.

fredgrott 4y ago

Hmm I wonder did any politician realize that their credit card transactions also are legal to scan and spy on using the same damn law? maybe someone should point that out to them?

pier25 4y ago

This plan is useless. In this day and age it's trivial to create a system for private communication that works outside the mainstream apps.

tmalsburg2 4y ago
Yes, it's so very obviously useless for the stated purpose that you've got wonder why they want it so badly.
dane-pgp 4y ago
When citizens start working around the law (if it passes), the forces who pushed for the law will start going after "unregulated" app stores and even websites that implement unfiltered chat / picture sending services. Perhaps that was their end goal all along.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

In the past few years, every shit done to internet freedoms in Russia (mass surveillance, censorship, blocking, etc) was done under the pretense of fighting terrorism or protecting children (don't you want to protect children, you monsters!). Then, of course, it was used to suppress political opposition and dissidents. This will happen in EU too, if it'll pass. Have wrong views on immigration/abortion/vaccination/economy/gender/sexuality? Your citizen rights after suspended, bank accounts frozen, kids taken away, etc. It is imperative to stop such initiatives in their infancy.

f38zf5vdt 4y ago

One thing I don't understand is how this could even be enforced? You could mandate it in controlled ecosystems but without a disconnection from the global internet it would have as much a chance of prevailing as the US did in the original crypto wars.

buzzwords 4y ago

This is a typical way for unpopular laws to pass. Pretend it's to save kids, to spread democracy or to whatever else you really care about.

aborsy 4y ago

The interesting thing about EU is that, because it’s a bureaucratic dictatorship, it can force it (worse, citizens are mostly obedient). So it’s particularly dangerous. Imagine France orders this! It’s not like Apple responding to consumers’ opinion.

Hakashiro 4y ago
> dictatorship Any source?
jhrmnn 4y ago
Dictatorship means total authority over a domain. EU is so very far from that. If anything it’s the opposite of dictatorship. The federal EU institutions are mostly toothless with respect to the nation states.
- native_samples 4y ago
  The EU is a partially constructed dictatorship. Within the domains delegated to it in the treaties, it has total power without voter accountability (the most voters can do is elect MEPs who slow things down a bit). Also in some areas where the EU has effectively seized power without a treaty change, this is also true e.g. corporate tax law. In some areas like health and defense it has failed (so far) to take powers, and so the usual democratic mechanisms at the state level are mostly still working. So I think you're not really disagreeing with aborsy, unless by "domain" you mean exclusively physical domains.

orangetuba 4y ago

I am not surprised. The EU consists of a bunch of bullies that force their views on member countries. Abide, or be sanctioned and bullied into compliance. Leaders of members countries are being bought to encourage membership. And when the people vote against it, there will be a new vote next year. And once you've joined, you can't leave out of fear of sanctions.

ivolimmen 4y ago
You have a really negative view on the EU. No you can leave the EU, like England did. We did not sanctioned them. It's not a smart move but it's what they wanted. Going forward we should join hands more not less. What is happening now with the war against Ukraine you really see the power of working together. Something we should do more .

dang 4y ago

This falls into the category of a bill proposal, or maybe not even that, since it seems to be just a paragraph announcing a forthcoming proposal? For a substantive HN thread, it's probably better to wait until there's something actual to discuss. For better and/or worse, proposed bills usually don't come to much (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20bills%20propos&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mantenpanther 4y ago

Fight this!

t0bia_s 4y ago

Of course it has nothing to do with effective search for child porn. They should search for criminals in dark web, not in emails. Seriously, how many abusers would be so dumb to send those pictures by email. It is same story again and again. Applying collective guilt was always terrible for society. And it is pure principle to implement totalitarian practices.

anthk 4y ago

- QTox for messaging. - Thunderbird+Enigmail or ClawsMail+GPG for email. - I2PD + mail.i2p account and general posting over NNTP and light web browsing. - NNCPGO for the worst case + "sneakernet" with encrypted USB drivers. http://www.nncpgo.org/ http://www.nncpgo.org/

toffi-fee 4y ago

Stupid question: Wouldnʼt it be alright if an open source messenger scans messages locally against a secret word list and only sends it to police if there's a hit, otherwise only send it to the recipient with the usual end-to-end encryption? The secret word list would need to be curated and digitally signed by several parties, including data security advocates to ensure that it doesn't simply contain the entire dictionary.

vletal 4y ago
It's like online voting. It works as long as the government does not have a malicious intent of staying in power indefinitely. Then the secret word list might include stuff like "free speech" or "Uighur" and the world would go to hell.
- toffi-fee 4y ago
  That's why I mentioned the multiple parties. But I understand your point. It would just be the next step for them to sneak in all kinds of words.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    We're not just talking about words here, though. You have to ask yourself: * Who do I trust to look at the pictures in the government database? * Who does the government trust to look at these pictures? * Who would even be willing to look at these pictures? These are probably disjoint sets, leading to a very empty intersection. Unfortunately, the logical impossibility of a government implementing a system that citizens should be happy with is not a barrier to it implementing some other system which it claims is good enough.
pseudo0 4y ago
That's the Chinese approach: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-has-function-block-political-keywords-2022-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-winter-olympics-app-ha... Also, having a secret, local wordlist is a challenge. Eg. What is stopping someone from testing every possible one-word message, using the reporting functionality as an oracle?

alecmuffett 4y ago

Analysis thread, beginning with link to full-text PDF of draft law: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1524066299600683008 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1524066299600683008