34 ms·

Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

• cbeach 4y ago
  > In other words, your personal life will be fully exposed to government scrutiny. So, why is it that almost no one is talking about this? Because it’s coming from the EU Commission, and they are intertwined with media and institutions in all member states. In the U.K., when we debated leaving the EU, I was struck by how obviously our leading broadcasters, such as the BBC, expressed such a pro-EU bias. Obviously, the mainstream media tends to align with the wealthy metropolitan liberal types who benefit from the EU. But we simply didn’t have a neutral media that we could rely on to report truths about the EU. That’s still the case today. The media won’t expose the EU for what it is - an ambitious, expansionist, authoritarian political project which benefits a few at the cost of many.
• Anonboxis 4y ago
  Here is the Regulation in question: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022:209:FIN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Combat_Child_Sexual_Abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb... Its full name is the: Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse
• raxxorraxor 4y ago
  The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. One major factor that works against users is central authentication. Schemes like oauth2 might bring convenience and security in many cases, but will endanger net freedom overall. Google just added age restriction on blogger. Result is that you need to provide Google with ID information to access some content. If more an more users elect to ID with their Google account you can see where it can lead. Naturally the EU wants to increase such schemes as well. It just released a law (DSA) that allegedly to restrict the influence of tech giants. That their proposals will drive people into ID schemes of said tech companies is either an oversight or something worse. I would think it is the latter and giant tech companies are very glad about the behavior of the commission. Because they too tried get people to use their ID solutions. Digital tech doesn't really prosper in the EU but certainly surveillance leveraging services of others. The only defense against such laws is to make them technologically not feasible. While Google did many good things for net security, their compliance on topics that serve its self-interest is a danger. Same goes for other large tech companies. That there is close collaboration between certain political elites and tech companies is pretty much a given. It was decried as a conspiracy theory until it was proven. Although it should be no surprise that there are such connections. Perhaps the influence of the EU commission is smaller, but I would not bet on it. Access to the market is on the hand they can play. Easily a strong enough hand to subject users to surveillance.
  • ur-whale 4y ago
    > The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. I disagree. While these are good to have, they are not enough. The reason is always the same: if you are found to be using the circumventing tech., you'll likely be in breach of the law, which will give the goons a legitimate reason to come and harass you. In a civilized country, that can translate into a fine, community service, etc... In the borderlands, it'll land you in jail or worse.
    • carlosjobim 4y ago
      The goons will come and harass you if you are inconvenient or a threat to the ruling class, even if you are complying with all existing regulations. This happens in every country and region. For the common man non-compliance is the only non-violent way to preserve his rights or exercise freedom. You can do it successfully if you are smart and agile.
      • olddustytrail 4y ago
        No it doesn't happen in every country and region. In many places there's no such thing as a "ruling class". Politicians are just another type of public sector worker and certainly not the best paid or wealthiest.
        • chopin 4y ago
          Where would that be? I live in Europe and I don't think there is a country where politicians aren't corrupt.
          • t0bia_s 4y ago
            As European living in country with highest inflation rate I must agree. What annoys me a lot is a trending narration about blaming Putin for everything. Ministry of interior has leaked manuals where is writen guide for public relations about it. Basically it says that media need to blame Putin for hungry and problems with food supply chain. https://www.mvcr.cz/soubor/krit-memo-putin-hlad-komunikacni-doporuceni-pdf.aspx https://www.mvcr.cz/soubor/krit-memo-putin-hlad-komunikacni-... If you search for articles, they are writen following this guide exactly. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=putin+a+hlad https://duckduckgo.com/?q=putin+a+hlad
• ecmascript 4y ago
  This is really, really scary and what scares me even more is these proposals just seems to keep coming and in time some of them will probably make their way into law. Used to be for EU but if any regulation like this goes through, I will immedietly vote for any politician willing to exit the EU. Honestly, I am kind of for leaving the EU anyway since I don't like the large centralized power it has become. There is litterally few who understand how the EU works, there is practically no way of knowing how to change EU politicians minds etc. If I want to change public opinion in my home country, that is way easier than doing it for the majority of the EU countries. It is barely a question of time until bad stuff happens in my view.
  • esskay 4y ago
    Be careful what you wish for. Here in the UK since leaving the government have been doing all they can to ensure mass surveilance and repression becomes more and more common, without those "pesky" EU laws stopping them.
    • ecmascript 4y ago
      Yeah I know, sorry to hear that but: 1. It is way easier to change the minds of the people in your home country rather than in several countries. 2. My country of birth, Sweden, has more history of rejecting stuff like that.
      • msm_ 4y ago
        Can your country of birth lobby in the EU to stop laws like this?
        • ecmascript 4y ago
          Honestly, I would believe some of them already do it. You're reading the news from a Swedish company anyway so we use to be pretty vigilant on privacy issues. Sweden is a small player compared to Germany and France, so I am uncertain how much weight our words have.
• pskisf 4y ago
  Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. - Thomas Jefferson
  • dijit 4y ago
    Roughly translates to: I prefer liberty with danger to peace with servitude/slavery.
    • xwolfi 4y ago
      And perfectly translates to: Better dangerous liberty than quiet servitude. Not sure why you needed to make such an awkward rough translation when the concepts are clear, the idiom known and the sentence so short in the target language, which is the language of the author as well, thus sharing bias in its latin... But I think this sentence is itself dangerous in its shortness, it almost makes you believe it's a discrete dichotomy rather than, as usual, a loooong gradient between two extreme, with orthogonal concerns adding to it to make it a zigzag. Better very rich in a quiet dictatorship than middle class in a chaotic old democracy, for instance. Or better poor in a clientelist theocracy than poor in an industrial dictatorship. It doesn't really make sense in the end, since freedom and servitude are not related to danger or safety. You can have all together, at different time or degree, for different people and geographies, regarding different slice of concern (freedom is so so vague, for instance). "Better have what you can tolerate for what you can afford, than something unaffordable or untolerable", is probably more interesting to understand the compromises real people make everyday, but I guess, so obvious we prefer to dream of a dichotomy :D
      • dijit 4y ago
        I don't know the quote, I was just translating the Latin for people. I have to say though, since you come off as quite rude: It doesn't "perfectly translate" to any single thing in English.
      • nonrandomstring 4y ago
        The issue is not whether they're intrinsically orthogonal or principle components, but that men make them so.
• can16358p 4y ago
  We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. Privacy is a human right. We probably all know that they will show reasons like "fighting terrorism", "preventing national threats" or "hunting down child pornography" etc, whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. Anyone who is really into something illegal will use something alternative anyway. This will only hurt people actually fighting for their rights, and this needs to stop.
  • msm_ 4y ago
    > We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. I agree in principle, but controlled != regulated. It's (technologically) relatively easy to create a private, censorship-resistant distributed system, but if it's illegal people just won't use it. It's a human problem, not a tech problem.
    • kragen 4y ago
      here in argentina uber was very illegal for several years and people used the fuck out of it in the usa heroin and meth are super illegal and people are using the fuck out of them many 80s pc video games only survive in a playable form because of a very illegal system of organized copyright infringement that removed copy protection mechanisms; people used the fuck out of that too in the usa gay sex was super illegal until, in many locations, 20 years ago. guess what gay people did "if it's illegal people just won't use it" is clearly not correct; i think it's what dave chappelle would describe as an extremely white thought the problem is if the design of the system provides law enforcement a bottleneck they can use for leverage against righteous lawbreakers
      • dtech 4y ago
        All those things are enjoyable and have no legal alternative. A chat application would have.
        • 4y ago
• gadders 4y ago
  Is this more or less stringent than the UK law?
  • Hizonner 4y ago
    Somewhat different in emphasis. Less about a vague "duty of care" and more about detailed, specific spying mandates. Different enforcement structure. Maybe slightly less chaotic in its impact. Still a giant shitshow.
• bodge5000 4y ago
  Not sure if it was here before, but they also posted an article yesterday on how this may (or may not, its up to interpretation) affect open source operating systems https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-source-operating-systems/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-wil...
  • demindiro 4y ago
    It was[1] but for some reason it got pushed off from the front page very quickly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608330
• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  There should be a law against spamming the lawmaking process with proposals that have previously failed or are near identical to it, for a set time period. Means, you are no longer allowed to lobby for a law proposal once it has been rejected for a time period of one voting cycle.
  • arlort 4y ago
    This proposal hasn't been made before (at least in the EU at the EU level) If you're thinking that you saw something like this last year and now again it's the same law. The EU legislative process is extremely slow (not that it's a bad thing in this case, I'd rather this not get rushed through, or even better not get through at all) And even now it is not likely to pass before December 2023 or might even get delayed to January 2024
  • ur-whale 4y ago
    1. The book of law should have a fixed number of words, written in stone in the constitution. Side effects: a) you want to pass a new law? Pick one in the book to get rid of. b) magically, the enforcement budget and the size of the fat leech that feeds off of it (the government) remains constant. See "The Advantage of a Dragon" by Stanislaw Lem [1] 2. A law should always (with the possible exception of those in the constitution) have an expiration date, voted with the law, with a maximum of 10 years, at which time the law should get re-voted on if it turns out it was actually useful to society. [1] http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3725 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3725
• nemo44x 4y ago
  The EU just seems like a more and more dystopian place where they placate the docile population with a few social benefits and threats to corporate interests at the cost of any sense of individual liberty and a rapidly declining set of rights and privacy from the state.
• DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  As a pro-EU citizen I feel more and more inclined to agree on some of the Brexit rhetoric. Commissioners have shown multiple times that they are too permeable to lobbying, too willing to water down tough environmental regulation, and too keen on 'security' surveillance. So far the EU parliament members have balanced the act with some sanity. But the power and lack of transparency of the EC both with regards to lobbying and conflict of interest is very concerning.
  • dijit 4y ago
    EU Parliament has nothing to do with this proposal. It's proposed by the EU Commission, and such things have been struck down by the Parliament before. Also: Britain hardly has any leg to stand on regarding privacy (which is something the EU usually has a focus on[0]). Did you forget the Snoopers Charter[1]? That isn't a proposal. That's law. [0]: https://gdpr.eu https://gdpr.eu [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016
    • DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      I am making the point that the parliament votes, and _rejects_ proposals that overreach. My point is not Britain as an example, but that one of the Brexit rhetoric points was the rah rah 'unelected officials'. Arguably we both know that EC comissioners are appointed by democratic governments but we see multiple times how permeable EC commisioners are: 1. Surveillance proposals such as posted in this thread 2. Net Neutrality exemptions - allowing Facebook/Youtube/et al. 'zero ratings' on metered connections 3. SUPD with guidelines that have so many Plastic exceptions that basically only q-tips and plastic forks got banned. Nestle, Coca-Cola, all the supermarket wrapping remain untouched. 4. 'Green Deal' was completely watered down on implementation. [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/06/exxonmobil-tried-to-get-european-green-deal-watered-down-claims-climate-lobbying-watchdog https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/06/exxonmobil-... Over and over they start with strong technocrat proposals and then cave in to business lobby.
      • 4y ago
• pelasaco 4y ago
  Just to play the advocate's advocate here: When the internet became so safe? They push, we push back. They block, we circumvent. That was always about that. We old hackers are used to that. Nothing will work out of the box, and it will be fine. Just embrace and adapt it.
  • pammf 4y ago
    Well, isn't this already part of pushing back?
    • pelasaco 4y ago
      if "we encourage journalists and citizens in all EU countries to question their governments and urge them to vote no." would help then Julian Assange/Snowden would have a different life today. Just get prepared to circumvent e vote better next time.
• Kukumber 4y ago
  Only the US should be allowed to spy on the EU, no the EU themselves :)
• guy98238710 4y ago
  Loss of balance. Child protection appears to have infinite weight. Conversely, personal privacy, access to information (esp. medical), and right to education appear to have zero weight.
  • grumple 4y ago
    Yep. You can justify any injustice with "won't somebody think of the children" or similar fears which inspire pearl-clutching. Don't fall for these authoritarian tactics.
• prof-dr-ir 4y ago
  The making of EU legislation can take years and is surprisingly transparent; in particular, the public is asked for input at several stages. So I am surprised that the article does not provide any link to an actual proposal - without it, how am I going to believe its claims?
  • tephra 4y ago
    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A2022%3A209%3AFIN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20... And the feedback 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... I should note (as someone who has been fighting against this) is that commissioner Johansson has avoided meeting with civil servant groups in the lead up to this proposal (we have tried _multiple_ times to get a meeting).
    • prof-dr-ir 4y ago
      Well, thank you for your efforts but I do not think I see anything alarming at this stage. (Perhaps this means that your efforts paid off...) The proposal itself does not explicitly forbid end-to-end encryption; it might one day try to, but the regulatory scrutiny board insists that the legislation should "respect the prohibition of general monitoring obligations." In fact, having seen all this I think I can kind of see why journalists are not actively "pursuing" this as the article keeps asking.
• guy98238710 4y ago
  The very purpose of privacy is to break laws. Privacy is the space where laws do not apply. I don't remember where I heard it, but I really like this definition of privacy. It's a defense against bad laws and there are quite a few of those, including child porn and child abuse laws that actually lead to prosecution of adolescents (sending nudes to each other) and loss of access to medical information for kids (anyone tried to search for "12yo penis" images?).
  • bpfrh 4y ago
    No privacy can also be that you vote for measure x but nobody knows that but you, e.g. you can have an opinion/hobby without anyone knowing about it but you and people you trust.
    • guy98238710 4y ago
      Indeed, privacy protects from social pressure in addition to protecting you from the government. In any case, it's intended for things other people do not approve of.
  • kragen 4y ago
    privacy is the space where coercion does not apply; law enforcement is necessarily coercive, but not all coercion is legal not even all police coercion is legal; when the police disappeared tens of thousands of people here during the last dictatorship, the police were breaking the law, and in some cases the disappeared were not also, privacy can protect people from repercussions from activities that are legal at one time but prohibited later, perhaps after a change of government, such as celebrating passover
  • ivan_gammel 4y ago
    No, that is wrong. It is the purpose of the laws to protect privacy, which is our right to protect ourselves by prevention of sharing sensitive information with bad actors. Our privacy means that others cannot exploit our weaknesses to get our money or to bully us. It means that rogue cop cannot blackmail us by exposing details of our private life to public. There are many scenarios when too much data landed in the wrong hands. People may use privacy as an excuse to hide their crimes, but criminals are minority and lawful citizens will be exposed to criminals and police states if privacy shield no longer exists. As for child abuse, when we have to seek for evidence, the crime has already happened. Solving it is important, but what is more important than that? Prevention.
• random_upvoter 4y ago
  The European leaders talk big about being the protectors of democracy and yet all the time things get pushed through that literally nobody wants.
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
    Just as non-European leaders.
  • zerodensity 4y ago
    I dunno I like this proposal. So at least one person wants it.
• alexbiet 4y ago
  Let them have it. Complete and absolute control over all citizens. Nothing more, nothing less. Then what? They will finally realise absolute power is an empty pursuit that brings nothing but misery for both the masses and the so called elites. False leaders have no place leading anyone as they lead through fear and insecurity. Their lack of trust cemented in incompetence, arrogance and hubris leads to a neurotic chase for absolute and utter control over everything and everybody. How empty that path must be... and deemed for nothing but failure. True leaders inspire through visions for the future and they will eventually rise to lead. A true leader inspires action and trust, unity and purpose. True leaders are instinctually acknowledged by everyone, are accountable to everyone and value responsibility over personal power. Maturity, good character and wisdom is naturally part of their character. Hardly anything resembling a true leader can be observed in the current political space... and that speaks volumes to the state of our society. Here comes the change, unexpected and imminent, to sweep away all falsities and reveal the truth.
  • walterbell 4y ago
    Why would mortal humans waste time/money on mass experiments with predictably useless outcomes?
    • alexbiet 4y ago
      Entirely the point I am making, albeit indirectly. The majority of rules and regulations nowadays are aimed at more and more control over the people at little to no benefit to them. People get angry and protest such measures. Rinse and repeat, for at least the last decade or two. It’s repetitive and pointless. When does it become clear the once great system which brought us growth and prosperity is no longer fit for purpose? At what point people realise we need to shed the old system and its top crème de la crème in favour of a new one? We need new leaders capable of creating a vision for our future to inspire 8+ BLN people and to put in place the means to get us there.
      • walterbell 4y ago
        > At what point people realise we need to shed the old system and its top crème de la crème in favour of a new one? Excluding migration to new land, what is a good historical precedent? Sounds a bit like "Rewrite It In Rust!" Reboot is good for those who have extracted and sequestered value out of the old system. Less good for those whose assets were extracted and still have legal claims within the old system.
• xorry 4y ago
  > every single line that you write in all kinds of messaging apps (including encrypted services), your e-mails — yes, all of this — can be filtered out ... how exactly will this work?
  • menaerus 4y ago
    Network equipment of our ISPs already have this type of surveillance software. And there are number of examples where we have seen that it is being used by the government intel with success, and regardless of the communication chain being encrypted or not.
  • mderazon 4y ago
    There's no shortage of ways. For example mandate preinstalling a spyware on every mobile device sold
  • brutusborn 4y ago
    Government controlled firmware on all devices that reads the messages after they are unencrypted?
  • lcampbell 4y ago
    Probably just an extension to existing ETSI legal interception interfaces[1] that I believe are required to be implemented by all service providers of a certain size in the EU. Your personal email server and private IRC network are probably out of scope. [1] e.g. for email: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102200_102299/10223202/03.13.02_60/ts_10223202v031302p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102200_102299/10223202/... - the specs are really boring to read and there are lots and lots of them, if you want to deep dive. From what I can tell it's basically just the service provider implementing an API client that feeds everything they're required to a centralized endpoint.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• alphazard 4y ago
  For all of the software engineers here, you would have a much larger impact by tackling this problem at a technical level, or contributing financially to groups that lobby against this sort of thing. Going out and protesting, or even helping to circulate a petition is going to be less impactful, and an inefficient use of your time and skillset. Your vote is worth 1, maybe your influence is worth a dozen or so. You could make millions of votes against you totally moot with the right piece of software. Look for existing projects that deal with secure networking, E2EE, self-hosted apps and ask how you can help.
  • ianopolous 4y ago
    Totally agree! Shameless self promotion: have a look at Peergos - https://github.com/peergos/peergos https://github.com/peergos/peergos Our tech book might be a better starting point for this group: https://book.peergos.org https://book.peergos.org
    • okokwhatever 4y ago
      Love it. Thanks!
  • loup-vaillant 4y ago
    That piece of software still needs to be legal. If it's illegal much fewer people will actually use it, and those who use it anyway can arbitrarily be punished for it.
    • alphazard 4y ago
      Detecting whether someone is using a particular piece of software is just part of the threat model, another technical problem, with a technical solution.
  • Eduard 4y ago
    Better fix the root cause, not the symptoms.
• TT-392 4y ago
  Something in me almost wants to see this law pass, just to see what happens. I am guessing anyone who knows about internet infra / privacy / security, would either stand up and protest it. Though, for some reason, part of me thinks people would just find a way around it, feel like it is fine like that and not protest at all (I sure prefer the first option). Or I guess the third option: mass noncompliance. Which I guess has been the answer to a lot of EU laws.
  • yreg 4y ago
    Mass non-compliance is problematic strategy, because then the government can persecute arbitrary people for stuff that “everyone” does. GDPR is one such high stake example where no business can really feel safe.
    • malermeister 4y ago
      But GDPR is kind of the opposite in that it protects the right to privacy (in this case from surveillance capitalism), so conflating them seems counterproductive
      • yreg 4y ago
        In a way both are about taking away liberties and chosing what's best for us. But yes, GDPR is not evil, it's just difficult to confidently comply with since it's so broad. Obviously very different to the proposal in the original post.
• daneel_w 4y ago
  Every SMS and phone call on the PSTN of most European countries is already part of a long-term archiving process dating back more than two decades. This legislation is in part meant to bring purely Internet-based communications into the dragnet, and part just retroactive legal gyrations to publically formalize the already established mass-surveillance of the PSTN.
• walterbell 4y ago
  Earlier Mullvad op-ed mentions age-verification, https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-source-operating-systems/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-wil... Article 6 of the law requires all "software application stores" to: - Assess whether each service provided by each software application enables human-to-human communication - Verify whether each user is over or under the age of 17 - Prevent users under 17 from installing such communication software California passed the AADC law in 2022, taking effect in 2024, requiring, https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/16/californias-age-appropriate-design-code-is-radical-anti-internet-policy/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/16/californias-age-appropri... - “impact assessments” before launching new features that kids are likely to access - businesses, not parents, to figure out what’s in the best interest of children - [treating] children as if they all .. face the same risks .. lumps together 17 year-olds and 2 year-olds - threatens to make face scans a routine and everyday occurrence - before you can go to a new site, you will have to do either face scanning or upload age authenticating documents Utah draft legislation, https://www.ksl.com/article/50569189/utah-lawmakers-want-age-restrictions-on-social-media-platforms https://www.ksl.com/article/50569189/utah-lawmakers-want-age... - would require every adult in Utah to submit age verification in order to use social media - minor accounts would need to be associated with a verified adult account - social media companies.. collect personal information from their parents
• keraf 4y ago
  It's quite ironic how much critics are aimed at China being a surveillance state when the EU train is going full steam ahead in that direction... Dark days ahead.
  • stu432 4y ago
    Who'd have thought those in charge were a bunch of hypocrites?
• throwrqX 4y ago
  Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or news show with their real name and face and tell a child abuse victim that while their concerns may be valid they are wrong and they should shut up? I doubt very many. I ran into a similar scenario once defending privacy when a lady who said she was abused as a child came into the conversation and told her story to the crowd. As you can imagine the crowd was very supportive of her and my concerns were more or less dismissed afterwards. There is nothing technical I could say that could persuade them as much as the poor lady's life story could.
  • vorpalhex 4y ago
    "Would the law you propose have stopped you being abused?" No. Police are not psychics. They do not stop theoretical crime. They can only respond after crime has happened.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • _vertigo 4y ago
    > how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or news show with their real name and face and tell a child abuse victim that while their concerns may be valid they are wrong and they should shut up? Well, putting aside the "shut up" part, I'd be happy to state publicly that under no (reasonable, peacetime) circumstances should the government be allowed to read my texts, emails, and documents. Obviously there's a bunch of qualifiers to assign to that (if I'm under suspicion of something, OK, sure, maybe the government can get a warrant) that I'm not qualified to speak intelligently about, but that's the gist. Saying that the government should not be able to read your email or list to your phone calls is not an unpopular opinion, at least in the States, and it's also not one that requires you to be of an overly technical persuasion to have. People support victims of child abuse and they also distrust the government and don't want it to have awesome powers of espionage it can wield against the entire populace at scale all of the time. Those positions might conflict with each other if you frame the conversation that way, but if you do frame it that way, I don't think it's a given that the child abuse argument is always going to win the debate.
• charles_f 4y ago
  Ok I know it sounds crazy but hear me out. I'm certain my neighbour is secretly conspiring against me. I've seen the signs, I'm not an idiot. He closes the curtains when I look into his place, I've seen him talking with the other neighbours, and you won't believe it! He named his dog Bozo, which I'm sure is just to allow him to call me names scott-free! I confronted him but he tells me to chill out. The balls on this guys... Now if we get that mass surveillance going on, we can safely assume that they'll mission private companies to do it. We all knoe what's happening in this case, they hire the best of the best (and by that I mean the best at cutting on cost and maximizing shareholders revenues). These have the best security teams! (and by that I mean that they cost very little). I can only hope for an Equifax or a Lastpass like breach, but worst case scenario I'm sure they will gladly sell my neighbour's data, and I'll finally be able to prove that SoaB is after me. I know all the privacy-conscious sissies out there will cry out, but I don't have anything to hide. I take good care of deleting my browser history and using private mode when I browse illegal websites
  • okokwhatever 4y ago
    Jokes aside. You and me knows that this will happen. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but it will happen. And when the day comes nobody will be accountable for the great mistake some politicians are gonna commit.
• sl0wh0rses 4y ago
  Funnily enough it is European companies and not American ones that are leading the charge on privacy. ProtonMail / Tutanota etc for example on the email front. I've heard of a company called Snacka! as well that seems to be using some gaming tech in streaming for end-to-end encrypted communication that doesn't suffer performance as much as services like jitsi. If more companies follow privacy principles like this in the way they build their products that's only part of the battle, though - it's also important to prevent such things from a legislative perspective.
  • zx85wes 4y ago
    Tutanota was forced to install a backdoor by a German court (see https://www.heise.de/news/Gericht-zwingt-Mailprovider-Tutanota-zu-Ueberwachungsfunktion-4972460.html https://www.heise.de/news/Gericht-zwingt-Mailprovider-Tutano...) I don't think a US court can force a US company to do so.
    • welterde 4y ago
      Didn't Lavabit shutdown because of exactly that [1]? So pretty sure the US secret courts can very much force companies to do just that and worse (even require them to be silent about it, which clearly is not the case in Germany). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-di...
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Stupid EU bureaucrats, don't they know you're supposed to put in the work and inject zero days in every consumer product so that you can create your very own spy network? You can't just legislate it!
• LelouBil 4y ago
  Could this even be allowed by the constitutuons of EU democracies? EU doesn't pass laws, it passes directives, rulings or recommendations. If it's not compatible with a member's constitution it will not pass.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• alan-stark 4y ago
  Sometimes I feel that the world is sleepwalking straight into the pages of 1984. Proposals to monitor chats, ban encryption, legitimize location tracking create perfect infrastructure for new dictators. If some day a new Hitler grabs power in a nuclear-capable country, he'll be able to track down and destroy dissenters before they have a chance to protest. What are some simple and practical actions any EU citizen can take now to stop this from going forward?
  • rqtwteye 4y ago
    Totally agree. Hitler's gestapo, Stalin's NKVD and East German Stasi would have loved the surveillance infrastructure and technology we are building up right now.
• O__________O 4y ago
  Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in my experience such campaigns would be meaningless without an existing tendency to seek out authoritarian rule. While likely flawed opinion, I do feel like one possible explanation is nationalism in general, since while many democratic countries will argue they believe in the rule of law, ultimately any non-citizen is treated as if they are within an authoritarian country and for sure not as citizens by default. Only once there are countries that treats all people equally and as citizens, will such an issue be addressed in my opinion.
  • dingusdew 4y ago
    Unpopular opinion: If you don't like democracy and use your democratic rights to actively work to dismantle it, you probably shouldn't actually be allowed to participate in democracy since you are operating in bad faith.
    • red1reaper 4y ago
      That is a good opinion in principle, but rather complicated to implement in a way that would work as expected. Most implementations would at best add too much bias to the process which would make it counterproductive, at worst it would corrupted in no time and lead to an authoritarian government which would defetat its porpouse.
    • O__________O 4y ago
      While I don’t agree, I do believe it’s a common perspective and one that’s important to have dialogue on. While for sure an imperfect response, I would say that no democracy will ever be absolutely perfect, since it would require a consensus on everything and everyone understanding the topic equally prior to voicing their opinion. Further, authoritarian beliefs are only true threat to a democracy if majority support authoritarian rule, at which point I would argue it’s not a democracy. That said, with the advancements of AI, it increasingly dangerous, since if given the tools and opportunity, an authoritarian minority might over take an unprepared majority.
• trieste92 4y ago
  > The Commission’s new demands would require regular plain-text access to users’ private messages, from email to texting to social media. So maybe just don't rely on proprietary messaging clients that claim to be encrypted?
• TallBellows3345 4y ago
  Was surprised to see this coming directly from mullvad. Big names are pushing back on this recently. Good.
• 1337shadow 4y ago
  Why not but then what's your plan against the explosion of crime?
• Laaas 4y ago
  If this goes through I will personally leave EU, and I wouldn't be surprised if others do too. What reason is there to remain in the EU? It being a regulatory superpower [0]? Metaphorical lol. [0]: https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_eu_as_a_digital_regulatory_superpower_implications_for_the_u/ https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_the_eu_as_a_digital_regul...
  • zerodensity 4y ago
    Where would you go?
    • nforgerit 4y ago
      As a German: It is good tradition to escape to South America.
    • Laaas 4y ago
      Any country in the top-50 of GDP (PPP) per capita would likely work well, but I would personally likely go to Hong Kong or one of the Arabic countries.
      • zerodensity 4y ago
        So Europe is to authoritarian for your liking so you go to China very interesting strategy.
• sAbakumoff 4y ago
  >>In other words, your personal life will be fully exposed to government scrutiny. So, why is it that almost no one is talking about this? Personally, I don't give a flying fuck about it. I have nothing to hide and if the proposed surveillance measures help in preventing crimes, I say – go for it, babe.
• pfoof 4y ago
  Don't you worry, one or two exploits by a black hat and "Johansson tapes" will be torrented around
• FpUser 4y ago
  >"The politicians proposing this legislation claim to be doing it for the sake of the children." For the sake of those children having an actual future rather than political GULAG I propose to fire those politicians, never let them close to any position of power again and have them monitored 24x7 as offenders.
• skrebbel 4y ago
  Any tips for what an EU citizen can do against this, beyond upvoting this story on HN?
  • alan-stark 4y ago
    Turns out Patrick Breyer from the Pirate Party already put up a list of practical steps, infographics and EP members, see https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/#WhatYou...
  • mordae 4y ago
    I think it's too late. https://european-pirateparty.eu/parliament-approves-chatcontrol/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/parliament-approves-chatcont... https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
    • prof-dr-ir 4y ago
      Your first link talks about a specific derogation approved by the EU parliament. It provides an exemption to the ePrivacy directive, which allows for (existing) searches for child sexual abuse material by major content providers to remain legal. Without this exemption these searches would apparently be in violation of the ePrivacy directive. You can read the derogation here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52020PC0568 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... . There is a somewhat helpful first page that provides context. Personally I think it is quite a reasonable derogation; the pirate party clearly disagrees.
  • alan-stark 4y ago
    Perhaps write letters to members of European Parliament explaining our concerns, then ask all our friends to do the same? To make it a low-cost effort, we could (a) prepare a list of relevant politicians (b) create a template of the letter. Then our non-technical friends need only sign and mail this. And if we put this all up as a one-pager on GitHub pages, it's suitable for sharing on social networks too ;)
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  How is they can make a really problematic privacy law that degrades the web in the name of privacy (would love to sue the EU on the basis that those cookie banners cause problems for people w/ disabilities) and an equally problematic law that helps embezzlers re-offend in the name of privacy but can then invade everyone’s privacy with chat control? Is there some court that can rein it in? Can the EU be made to explode like a computer in an old movie when it is faced with a contradiction? Can the rest of the world make the EU relocate to the moon or mars so we can have some peace?
• glass3 4y ago
  A bit off-topic: Which structure would be needed to make mass surveillance acceptable? Would it be possible to make it secure and transparent to the point that a mass surveillance system can be accepted as safe?
• dang 4y ago
  Related: EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34608330 - Feb 2023 (190 comments) Chat Control: The EU’s CSEM scanner proposal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34183772 - Dec 2022 (3 comments) EU chat control bill: fundamental rights terrorism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31416599 - May 2022 (5 comments) Chat control: EU Commission presents mass surveillance plan on May 11 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 - May 2022 (323 comments) The latest EU plan to outlaw encryption and introduce communication surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308617 - Nov 2021 (251 comments) EU interior ministers welcome mandatory chat control for all smartphones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29200506 - Nov 2021 (59 comments) EU Chatcontrol 2.0 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29066894 - Nov 2021 (197 comments) Messaging and chat control - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28115343 - Aug 2021 (317 comments) EU Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27759814 - July 2021 (11 comments) European Parliament approves mass surveillance of private communication - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27753727 - July 2021 (415 comments) Indiscriminate messaging and chatcontrol: Last chance to protest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27736435 - July 2021 (104 comments) IT companies warn in open letter: EU wants to ban encryption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26825653 - April 2021 (217 comments)
• pagutierrezn 4y ago
  The proposal from the EU is not the first step towards the end of our privacy. In fact, it is the last one. Everyone else does already have our data, they just want what the rest already have. TBH, I think we've lost every opportunity to correct this. And I'd be happy to be wrong
• capr 4y ago
  Cuz UE is so big on privacy don't you know. GDPR for the plebs and total surveillance for the state, got it.
• raydiatian 4y ago
  At least the EU asks before just doing it. Or have we forgotten why Edward Snowden is a Russian now? /s
• pelasaco 4y ago
  Funny how every department has the same aligned discourse. From https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/right-to-privacy https://www.coe.int/en/web/impact-convention-human-rights/ri... Governments can only interfere with these rights when it is specifically allowed by law, and done for a good reason – like national security or public safety. People have been screaming for that since years, but because of the impression that was for a good cause, we accepted. In the beginning was the bad hackers, then the terrorists, then to protect the children, then because of nazis, because of people that dont want be vaxx.. I will post it again, Glenn Greenwald is talking about it in different parts of the world https://rumble.com/v25depn-exclusive-extreme-escalation-of-brazils-censorship-regime-system-update-22.html https://rumble.com/v25depn-exclusive-extreme-escalation-of-b..., so either we defend this rights, regardless of who is the victim, or the surveillance will only increase - everywhere in the World.
• nforgerit 4y ago
  This whole act of ignorance, incompetence and "smart stupidity" on politicians side infuriates me so much, I feel seriously sympathetic towards going underground devoting the rest of my life to trolling the shit out of the EU gov'ts.
• chaostheory 4y ago
  This and the 14 eyes agreement further demonstrates that the GPRD is really just protectionist legislation for the EU’s tech and media companies. The EU is extremely hypocritical when it comes to the privacy of their citizens.
• GoToRO 4y ago
  " Therefore, we encourage journalists and citizens in all EU countries to question their governments and urge them to vote no." How about you go and vote for the -right- government? You can't fix a country with technology. Also, if you are a telecom operator in my country that means that you automatically allow the equivalent of FBI/CIA to connect directly in the switch with a cable. There is no other way to be a telecom operator. What you really want is to have a judge agree to listen to somebody or not.
• thomastjeffery 4y ago
  Here in the comments I see dozens of instances of the same argument: is legislation like this the result of malicious power-grabbing conspiracy or the blind social fear of out-groups? Either way, the conclusion is the same: government-run mass surveillance gets proposed and taken (politically) seriously. It's impossible to use that conclusion alone as evidence for either side of this argument, yet that is precisely what most of the comments here are trying to do! It's such a pointless argument to be had. There is no utility in either answer. It's impossible to fight a conspiracy without constructive evidence, and if a conspiracy is using propaganda to increase fear (as opposed to that fear being organic), then fighting that propaganda directly (as opposed to fighting the fear itself) requires knowledge of the propaganda's source, which itself is evidence of conspiracy! Right now, both perspectives seem likely to be valid, but choosing one over the other is pointless. We are stuck fighting a single conclusion: fear itself; so we may as well focus our energy on that.
• scotty79 4y ago
  Remember the times where ACTA was THE issue? Now we have a pandemic that just won't end, war with associated militarization and hit to the economy, inflation and cost of living crisis and climate change mass migrations to look forward to. How do people have mental capacity to even think about the potential dangers of mass surveillance in democratic countries?
• fleddr 4y ago
  Excessive authoritarianism is scary but the thing that people should really wake up to is the nuclear combination of authoritarianism and digitization. As an example, capital controls. I grew up in the 80s, which was largely cash-based. You got paid in cash, spent in cash, and gift/transact to others in cash. Oversight was severely limited, close to non-existent. The concept is that you're innocent until proven guilty. It's your money, do with it what you want and it's nobody's business what you do with it. And should you engage in any illegal matters, then it's up to the government to build this case with due diligence: have a probable cause, collect evidence, maybe arrange a warrant, etc. The important part is the very high barrier to building such a case. It's a huge amount of work just to do this for one case. Because of this, authoritarianism is kept in check. You could say it doesn't "scale". Now we fast forward to our digital "cash" society. It's questionable if you actually own the money at all, but that's a technicality that is beyond the point. You have no transaction privacy. Not only is it all on record, the threshold for a flagged transaction gets lower and lower. Buy a car and the bank knows and the IRS knows (in the Netherlands). There's a proposal to do laundering analysis on any transaction > 100 euro. You can't deposit or withdraw sizable money without caps or raising all kinds of flags. The privacy is eliminated. There is no probable cause or warrant, you're treated as guilty by default and evidence is to be collected that you're innocent. A full reversal of assumptions, rights and freedom. Which is only the beginning, because my true point is that this scales. A government now has the ability to do whatever the hell they want with your money. They can analyze millions of us and control it with the push of a button. Wrong photo in iCloud? Money frozen. Political opponent? Assets seized. Spent too much of your money on high energy products? Programmatic tax applied. You can make that list as long as you want, but let's take even the absolute simplest case of having that wrong photo. Imagine the analog scenario where a government regularly bursts through the door of your home to look at your photo albums. That would be the most absurd thing ever, not to mention ridiculously inefficient. Yet this is digitally happening as we speak, and nobody knows or cares. This kind of digital insight and power over your life is a power that should not exist. Most people in this world live in authoritarian countries. Quite a few democratic one are edging towards it. Do the math.
• double2helix 4y ago
  It's 1984 for real. I read Edward Snowdens biography a couple weeks ago and one thing that floors me is people's lackadaisical response to the gross violation of laws our government was violating. I think people are afraid to stand up for there right to privacy, because they feel unpatriotic or that it may make them look like a criminal with something to hide. I do belive with proper due process and warranting the government should be able to carry out covert surveillance of those suspected of MAJOR terrorism only. But who draws that line? And how do you trust them?
• neelkadia 4y ago
  EU is bullshit. I wish I can fine EU for doing mass surveillance under their own laws.
• noduerme 4y ago
  Dumb question but it sounds like this law would also require EU-based VPNs to mirror all their traffic to governments without a warrant... where (if anywhere) would folks here look for a secure VPN if it passes?