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Mullvad's campaign against EU chat control

374 points by cristiioan 4y ago

jacooper 4y ago
Great work! that Ad targeting EU politicians is savage!
BowBun 4y ago
This seems like an appropriate campaign to reach people who probably don't think about this kind of stuff. I think there's more than enough HN articles that show the tech circle's opposition to these kinds of measures already. Energy is better spent explaining the issue to others and advocating for the right thing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
outime 4y ago
To be honest I'm not very hopeful. The average Joe really is gullible - just drop some terrorism, children and nowadays some "preventing misinformation" bs (which of course has never and will never be twisted to fit government's needs at the time) to the mix and people will accept it. Nevertheless I support these campaigns since I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.
- seanw444 4y ago
  I'm not either. But it's always a fight worth fighting. If nobody is vocally against this stuff, governments can just go "see, nobody even wants full privacy anyways."
- pydry 4y ago
  This is often where creative memes help. This wouldn't be the first issue where some public education is needed.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Are they gullible or pragmatic? I appreciate the concern here but at the end of the day these laws hardly affect the average Joe so why should he care? There is some wisdom in not worring about future hypotheticals until they actually happen.
  - outime 4y ago
    >Are they gullible or pragmatic? Gullible. Pragmatic would be a person who doesn't worry about completely made up things - not the case. >these laws hardly affect the average Joe so why should he care That's where I completely disagree and I encourage you to read more about how this is an overreach. I won't link anything specific to prevent nitpicking but googling "chat control summary" should bring some ideas at least. >There is some wisdom in not worring about future hypotheticals until they actually happen Well this isn't a hypothetical, it's another step towards overreach and should be at least exposed. It's literally the boiling frog apologue [1]. When it actually happens we may already be burned alive - metaphorically speaking, hopefully - and there won't be much else left to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      > Pragmatic would be a person who doesn't worry about completely made up things - not the case. They are completely made up things though. As an example: Climate change is not made up since it is affecting us now. Assuming what a future government might do is purely hypothetical though. I could draw a hypothetical that these laws will create world peace and stop nuclear war with the same amount of authority. Both are possible.
- beardog 4y ago
  It is also just not caring. In the US the largest voter bloc is non-voter most of the time, even in presidential elections, with primaries and midterms skewing even worse. It is better in Germany though, but not vastly so.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  I've never seen bottom up support for those type of measures. They are also universally unpopular: https://european-pirateparty.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/chatcontrol.png https://european-pirateparty.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/c... No amount of terrorist or pedophile arguments have changed it. People don't accept it - at worst they are apathetic. This type of campaigns - and getting some media on our side will help.
- vindscreenviper 4y ago
  [flagged]
- mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  Don't forget "fighting hate speech". If one doesn't support "fighting hate speech", that person is obviously an alt-right neo-Nazi. I'm not hopeful either. For the first time in literally millennia, we've enjoyed a few golden decades of almost entirely uncontrolled communication. And now a lot of us are (unknowingly) begging for that to be taken away.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tpmx 4y ago
Translations: First ad: Kid: Haha!! Did you send the photo to mom, dad? Dad's phone: Your photo has triggered our criminal activities filter. Your online services have been suspended and the police has been alerted. Caption: Create safe spaces online for children instead of making the internet unsafe for everyone. ... Second ad: First worker: Weren't we just supposed to look for sexual crimes and terrorism? Second worker: That was during the previous government. Third worker: adds a 'race' label Caption: The governments of today say they will monitor serious crimes. What will the governments of tomorrow say?
- zirgs 4y ago
  This is what Microsoft and Google are doing already. This is why I don't backup my photos to a cloud any more.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - thr717272 4y ago
    And if you are worried, don't upload to a some smaller provider either because some of them might have fun looking at the backups of the things that people find to to sensitive to upload to Google.
    - zirgs 4y ago
      There's nothing sensitive - I just don't like being treated as a potential criminal.
      - thr717272 4y ago
        Then you should be fine. I'd still recommend resisting chat control since once that is in place they'll soon go after independent hosters.
binglybongly 4y ago
[flagged]
- fwlr 4y ago
  Do they need one?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
elephanlemon 4y ago
Great to see a campaign like this being rolled out to the public. Wish there were orgs in the US that could spend this kind of money.
tommica 4y ago
Well done!
agentwiggles 4y ago
Wow, kudos. I don't see any way on Mullvad's site to donate to the cause... I might just have to buy a second Mullvad account for a few months to support them.
- viereier 4y ago
  [flagged]
fxgp 4y ago
[flagged]
mothwingpatrol 4y ago
[flagged]
- miroljub 4y ago
  In this case, their interest is aligned with the public interest, so nothing wrong.
  - mothwingpatrol 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Macha 4y ago
    Epic Vs Apple, Oracle Vs Google are also just companies acting in their own interest but that doesn't mean that the public should be unconcerned or that the people's interest won't align more or entirely with the side of one corporation.
  - dilawar 4y ago
    +1. I see nothing wrong in playing positive sum games. Mullvad will ptobably gain a lot if they succeed but as long public also gains a little, I am totally cool with it.
- cristiioan 4y ago
  After using Mullvad for a while now, I believe they care about privacy more than others. Maybe I'm wrong.
Zak 4y ago
There are an unusual number of comments from new accounts making disingenuous arguments on this post. I wonder who is behind the astroturfing. The answer to "what else should we do about bad people doing bad things?" is, of course how we usually catch people doing bad things: old-fashioned detective work. It involves taking reports of suspicious or illegal acts, interviewing witnesses and associates, requesting court orders to search or surveil specific people and places when there's evidence to do so, etc.... It doesn't scale. It's not supposed to.
- f_devd 4y ago
  > I wonder who is behind the astroturfing I noticed the same thing, but this really is a strange one since there isn't an obvious single party which would desire this legislation (from my limited view). External state-actors (e.g. China for proxy-policing), or non-democratic internal politicians/leaders (EU/EEA neo-facists?), is the only thing I can imagine.
  - tpmx 4y ago
    More likely, TBH, in this case: Just one random person with a strong conviction and sub-par execution. There is a meta-effect going on here: Your complaining about the now vastly downvoted comments is now filling the top of this topic.
    - f_devd 4y ago
      You're probably right, seems like there hasn't been any new ones since the original influx. EDIT: never mind since posting this there have been a few more.
  - pilsetnieks 4y ago
    It's a tired tale by now but stirring shit (whatever shit wherever it happens) is literally part of the Russian playbook [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
endisneigh 4y ago
I agree, we need to stop the EU overreach immediately.
lofaszvanitt 4y ago
The problem is there are no reports on what counter terrorism units achieved, how many potential attacks they thwarted because it would jepoardize their work, at least that's the mantra. So it's a you have to believe us that these measures is a must situation. The problem is, that the silicon we use in everyday hardware is a black box. Same applies to online services. We do not even know how Youtube's and other big services' and hardware units' lawful intercept/secretservice interface looks like and what options do they offer to surveil and manipulate (!) average people. So there is deffo zero insight into this matter. Who do you believe? It's like religion if you don't know what to look for. So... choose a god and believe.
- Macha 4y ago
  If we look at the number of terrorism incidents in Sweden Vs say the number of times a public official got in trouble for abusing state power as well, then the two conclusions is that either the existing mechanisms are sufficient for thwarting terrorism or the threat of terrorism is overplayed to begin with
- viereier 4y ago
  [flagged]
- kneebonian 4y ago
  > The problem is there are no reports on what counter terrorism units achieved, how many potential attacks they thwarted because it would jepoardize their work, I used to subscribe to this but then there was the governor's kidnapping plot in Minnesota that the FBI started blowing their own horn about and making such a big deal right up until it turned out that 6 of the 13 individuals involved were in fact members of the FBI. That kinda shook my trust in the whole "we can't talk about our success because it is top secret." Excuse
- troyvit 4y ago
  Yeah I agree. I'm starting to wonder about that mantra. If disclosing your successes endangers the work so much then maybe it's not such great work. The whole "there will always be bad actors" who want to "destroy our democracy" starts to wear thin when such high levels of secrecy are also eroding democracy. If governments opened up more about what they're doing they might lose a few more of their secret battles (and people will die) but maybe it would be worth it when you look at the overall preservation of democratic thought. That's the ramblings of a wannabe patriot though, and not a lawyer, and lawyers are deciding all this.
dsign 4y ago
Ha! I probably should get a mullvad account just to support them (even if I use my own VPN). Something that is not discussed much in Sweden is surveillance via the bank system. Banks have access to customers' transaction information and use it for two purposes: the "useful" feature of telling their customer how many of their purchases were e.g. food vs entertainment or house rent, and--of course--for advertising their products and services to their customers. And then the government has legislation to demand that banks mass-report certain information from private citizens, like revenue/expenses for financial services (i.e. interest paid on loans and capital earnings from financial assets) plus any international transactions. One small stumble down the slippery slope of surveillance, and the Swedish government will be able to build profiles of each citizen using the information collected by banks.
- seanw444 4y ago
  Make Monero popular (doomer wojack)
- zirgs 4y ago
  Can't they already build profiles using info from their IRS?
  - kqr 4y ago
    I don't remember the details but Swedish law takes a fairly strong stance on preventing government agencies from sharing information with each other, for better and worse.
- feckmore 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - prottog 4y ago
    Do you have any proof of this?
    - 4y ago
matthewdgreen 4y ago
I am currently reading through all of the legislation to try to figure out what the latest version of this actually requires from providers. Early versions talked about scanning for "grooming behavior" in textual conversations, but then also required that there would be no mass-scanning of communications: this seems obviously contradictory. What's frustrating about these laws is how vague everything is: I wish there were more high-quality summaries of the current legislation's terms. (If they exist, please post them here.)
- mrshadowgoose 4y ago
  The ambiguity is by design. It puts the onus on the implementer to be overzealous under fear of being criminally liable. This has the added benefit (to the slimy legislators pushing this garbage) of allowing them to scapegoat any perceived excesses onto corporations and developers.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  The legislation [1] is amazingly vague about the impact on end-to-end encrypted systems. In fact the string "encryption" appears twice, and only once in the body of the text (in Paragraph 26 on page 27.) This paragraph basically says "it's ok to use end-to-end encryption" but does not actually stipulate an exemption for scanning technologies. Presumably this means you would need to somehow implement an effective scanner into your end-to-end encryption. The legislation gives no other guidance about how to do this, how secure it will be, or even a mild discussion of the tradeoffs. This is alarming because the bill also makes clear that the goal is to detect not only known and unknown CSAM using some technological measure, but also to detect textual content that represents "grooming behavior." Only the "known" CSAM detection approach has ever even been attempted in a production system (with significant limitations) and that system was not ultimately deployed due to technical and customer concerns. But as much as CSAM media scanning worries me, the idea of automated ML-based text analysis for something as vague as "grooming behavior" is frankly terrifying. And I haven't even considered the slippery slope that becomes visible the second you build text-analysis and reporting systems into encrypted communications. What is much more concerning than the legislation is the Impact Assessment [2], which is cited in the legislation to justify its reasoning. Specifically, the Impact Assessment recommends Option E, which is "mandatory scanning of all known and unknown CSAM, as well as textual detection of 'grooming behavior'" even in systems that deploy E2E encryption. Where the legislation is vague about E2E encryption, the impact assessment [2] leaves no scrap of unambiguity: it makes clear that the need for these mandatory scanning mechanisms is almost entirely a response to the increasing deployment of E2EE, and specifically cites Facebook's (still un-deployed) 2019 encryption announcement to support its argument for a mandatory scanning requirement. It uncritically cites Apple's (since withdrawn) CSAM scanner (p. 39) as an example of a balanced privacy solution. It cites vaguely to the existence of scanners capable of detecting unknown CSAM, barely acknowledging that such techniques are entirely at the hypothetical/research stage and may not be safe at all. Finally it provides a privacy analysis that somehow concludes that the privacy benefits "in protecting victims" naturally outweigh all other concerns that might pop up around the deployment of what will be the world's most powerful ML-based text and media mass-surveillance system for encrypted and unencrypted private messages. Because take note: while the authors don't use that terminology, readers should have no doubt: that is what the EU is proposing to build with this legislation. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:13e33abf-d209-11ec-a95f-01aa75ed71a1.0001.02/DOC_1&format=PDF https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:13e33abf-... [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022SC0209 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
alphanullmeric 4y ago
Typical EU behaviour. Same ones constantly whining about how Swiss banks won’t adopt their financial surveillance policies. Governments love to call it transparency when trying to justifying violating other people’s privacy.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  This is in no way comparable. There is a case to be made against rich people trying to hide their wealth in Switzerland, while they live in an EU country. They are also the majority doing it, as no average Joe can. Weakening cryptography with the excuse of going after a minuscule percentage of the population, is about effectively considering any citizen a potential criminal.
  - alphanullmeric 4y ago
    They’re comparable if your support of a policy doesn’t depend on who it’s targeted against. That’s what makes us different.
    - manuelabeledo 4y ago
      Hiding money from tax agencies has one, and only one, reason to be, and it causes a net deficit for the majority of the population, as in taxes not being collected. The only people who loses when we target tax havens, are those evading taxes. Strong encryption benefits the majority of the population, as it strengthens security and privacy, for everything. Weak encryption would actually make it easier for certain criminals to operate, and it would punish regular people indiscriminately. > That’s what makes us different Then I would have to say that your take is superficial and naive.
      - alphanullmeric 4y ago
        No you’re just inconsistent. Force is only justified in response to force. Even when it would benefit you to access someone else’s money.
lifeinthevoid 4y ago
I am really worried about this. I feel completely helpless though, I am almost a 100% convinced this legislation will make it through. It will be the worst day in the history of the EU. Great to see this campaign though.
- feckmore 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - carimura 4y ago
    weak encryption is weak for everyone.
    - feckmore 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - Zetice 4y ago
        And thank you for your bootlicking. I wonder if the irony of creating new accounts just to comment on the uselessness of anonymity is lost on you or not…
  - VulgarExigency 4y ago
    Account created 17 minutes ago? Can you hook me up with an astroturfing job feckmore?
  - unity1001 4y ago
    Yeah. You can bet that they wont use it to spy on everyone for everything and they will use it only for 'pedophiles'. Just like how the patriot act only targeted terrorists... ... The naivete is mind boggling...
- pfoof 4y ago
  We will then go and use GPG and Tor, where's the problem
teekert 4y ago
I mean, who is going to stop me? Think about it: Who and how are they going to stop me from applying some math to my messaging. I’d almost say: Good luck. But it’s just too horrible to think what would be needed to prevent me from privately chatting with my partner. The threat of jail time? Total control of my devices? Wtf is this savage thing they are proposing? Do we envy China all of a sudden?
lilsoso 4y ago
If the law were to go through, would this imply that Swedish VPN traffic would likely be monitored? It seems impossible that the government could separate the traffic of its citizens for spying out of that of foreign nationals.
why_at 4y ago
Does anybody understand the ad that is just a long string of numbers? They give a translation but it still doesn't make sense to me. >9781529035698 >1 >12* >*We placed this ad here for you to start practicing private communication in a public setting. This could be good to know if the European Commission's chat control law becomes reality. What's even weirder is the numbers in the translation are different from the original.
- MitchellCash 4y ago
  It's the ISBN of Edward Snowden's book "Permanent Record: A Memoir of a Reluctant Whistleblower". The numbers in the poster differ because it's the ISBN of the Swedish translated copy of the book.
  - why_at 4y ago
    Nice. I guess I should have tried googling it but I was convinced it was some kind of code.
  - p1peridine 4y ago
    Unrelated to his book, but anyone else find Ed's last name mildly amusing? English is not my first language so when we say "Snowden", unless we really try to do an American English accent, it can sometimes sound like "Snowedii-n". His last name means: > English: habitational name from any of the many minor places called from hills where the snow lay long (Old English snāw ‘snow’ + dūn ‘hill’). [0] "To be snowed in": when you can't exit the property/house because of fallen snow. Keep that same thought but remove the snow element (still "stuck") and replace property with country. Now take "Snowden", but make the E longer and make it sound more like an I. Edward Snowed-in. One could say that he is snowed in, in another country. Similary, another NSA leakers name: Reality Winner. Not poking fun at their names, just pointing out the irony because of the situation they are/was in. [0]: https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=snowden https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=snowden
zirgs 4y ago
Think of the children - their privacy is going to be violated if whatever they post online triggers the scanner. Then some random stranger will read your kid's private messages. That chat control really looks like a creep magnet. What could possibly go wrong...
Anonboxis 4y ago
Articles about the new proposal do a really poor job at reporting what the specific regulation in question is. So here it is: 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...
trizuz 4y ago
[dead]

374 points by cristiioan 4y ago

Great work! that Ad targeting EU politicians is savage!

This seems like an appropriate campaign to reach people who probably don't think about this kind of stuff. I think there's more than enough HN articles that show the tech circle's opposition to these kinds of measures already. Energy is better spent explaining the issue to others and advocating for the right thing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

outime 4y ago

To be honest I'm not very hopeful. The average Joe really is gullible - just drop some terrorism, children and nowadays some "preventing misinformation" bs (which of course has never and will never be twisted to fit government's needs at the time) to the mix and people will accept it. Nevertheless I support these campaigns since I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

seanw444 4y ago
I'm not either. But it's always a fight worth fighting. If nobody is vocally against this stuff, governments can just go "see, nobody even wants full privacy anyways."
pydry 4y ago
This is often where creative memes help. This wouldn't be the first issue where some public education is needed.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Are they gullible or pragmatic? I appreciate the concern here but at the end of the day these laws hardly affect the average Joe so why should he care? There is some wisdom in not worring about future hypotheticals until they actually happen.
- outime 4y ago
  >Are they gullible or pragmatic? Gullible. Pragmatic would be a person who doesn't worry about completely made up things - not the case. >these laws hardly affect the average Joe so why should he care That's where I completely disagree and I encourage you to read more about how this is an overreach. I won't link anything specific to prevent nitpicking but googling "chat control summary" should bring some ideas at least. >There is some wisdom in not worring about future hypotheticals until they actually happen Well this isn't a hypothetical, it's another step towards overreach and should be at least exposed. It's literally the boiling frog apologue [1]. When it actually happens we may already be burned alive - metaphorically speaking, hopefully - and there won't be much else left to do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    > Pragmatic would be a person who doesn't worry about completely made up things - not the case. They are completely made up things though. As an example: Climate change is not made up since it is affecting us now. Assuming what a future government might do is purely hypothetical though. I could draw a hypothetical that these laws will create world peace and stop nuclear war with the same amount of authority. Both are possible.
beardog 4y ago
It is also just not caring. In the US the largest voter bloc is non-voter most of the time, even in presidential elections, with primaries and midterms skewing even worse. It is better in Germany though, but not vastly so.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
I've never seen bottom up support for those type of measures. They are also universally unpopular: https://european-pirateparty.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/chatcontrol.png https://european-pirateparty.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/c... No amount of terrorist or pedophile arguments have changed it. People don't accept it - at worst they are apathetic. This type of campaigns - and getting some media on our side will help.
vindscreenviper 4y ago
[flagged]
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
Don't forget "fighting hate speech". If one doesn't support "fighting hate speech", that person is obviously an alt-right neo-Nazi. I'm not hopeful either. For the first time in literally millennia, we've enjoyed a few golden decades of almost entirely uncontrolled communication. And now a lot of us are (unknowingly) begging for that to be taken away.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tpmx 4y ago

Translations: First ad: Kid: Haha!! Did you send the photo to mom, dad? Dad's phone: Your photo has triggered our criminal activities filter. Your online services have been suspended and the police has been alerted. Caption: Create safe spaces online for children instead of making the internet unsafe for everyone. ... Second ad: First worker: Weren't we just supposed to look for sexual crimes and terrorism? Second worker: That was during the previous government. Third worker: adds a 'race' label Caption: The governments of today say they will monitor serious crimes. What will the governments of tomorrow say?

zirgs 4y ago
This is what Microsoft and Google are doing already. This is why I don't backup my photos to a cloud any more.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thr717272 4y ago
  And if you are worried, don't upload to a some smaller provider either because some of them might have fun looking at the backups of the things that people find to to sensitive to upload to Google.
  - zirgs 4y ago
    There's nothing sensitive - I just don't like being treated as a potential criminal.
    - thr717272 4y ago
      Then you should be fine. I'd still recommend resisting chat control since once that is in place they'll soon go after independent hosters.

binglybongly 4y ago

[flagged]

fwlr 4y ago
Do they need one?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

elephanlemon 4y ago

Great to see a campaign like this being rolled out to the public. Wish there were orgs in the US that could spend this kind of money.

tommica 4y ago

Well done!

agentwiggles 4y ago

Wow, kudos. I don't see any way on Mullvad's site to donate to the cause... I might just have to buy a second Mullvad account for a few months to support them.

viereier 4y ago
[flagged]

fxgp 4y ago

[flagged]

mothwingpatrol 4y ago

[flagged]

miroljub 4y ago
In this case, their interest is aligned with the public interest, so nothing wrong.
- mothwingpatrol 4y ago
  [flagged]
- Macha 4y ago
  Epic Vs Apple, Oracle Vs Google are also just companies acting in their own interest but that doesn't mean that the public should be unconcerned or that the people's interest won't align more or entirely with the side of one corporation.
- dilawar 4y ago
  +1. I see nothing wrong in playing positive sum games. Mullvad will ptobably gain a lot if they succeed but as long public also gains a little, I am totally cool with it.
cristiioan 4y ago
After using Mullvad for a while now, I believe they care about privacy more than others. Maybe I'm wrong.

Zak 4y ago

There are an unusual number of comments from new accounts making disingenuous arguments on this post. I wonder who is behind the astroturfing. The answer to "what else should we do about bad people doing bad things?" is, of course how we usually catch people doing bad things: old-fashioned detective work. It involves taking reports of suspicious or illegal acts, interviewing witnesses and associates, requesting court orders to search or surveil specific people and places when there's evidence to do so, etc.... It doesn't scale. It's not supposed to.

f_devd 4y ago
> I wonder who is behind the astroturfing I noticed the same thing, but this really is a strange one since there isn't an obvious single party which would desire this legislation (from my limited view). External state-actors (e.g. China for proxy-policing), or non-democratic internal politicians/leaders (EU/EEA neo-facists?), is the only thing I can imagine.
- tpmx 4y ago
  More likely, TBH, in this case: Just one random person with a strong conviction and sub-par execution. There is a meta-effect going on here: Your complaining about the now vastly downvoted comments is now filling the top of this topic.
  - f_devd 4y ago
    You're probably right, seems like there hasn't been any new ones since the original influx. EDIT: never mind since posting this there have been a few more.
- pilsetnieks 4y ago
  It's a tired tale by now but stirring shit (whatever shit wherever it happens) is literally part of the Russian playbook [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

endisneigh 4y ago

I agree, we need to stop the EU overreach immediately.

lofaszvanitt 4y ago

The problem is there are no reports on what counter terrorism units achieved, how many potential attacks they thwarted because it would jepoardize their work, at least that's the mantra. So it's a you have to believe us that these measures is a must situation. The problem is, that the silicon we use in everyday hardware is a black box. Same applies to online services. We do not even know how Youtube's and other big services' and hardware units' lawful intercept/secretservice interface looks like and what options do they offer to surveil and manipulate (!) average people. So there is deffo zero insight into this matter. Who do you believe? It's like religion if you don't know what to look for. So... choose a god and believe.

Macha 4y ago
If we look at the number of terrorism incidents in Sweden Vs say the number of times a public official got in trouble for abusing state power as well, then the two conclusions is that either the existing mechanisms are sufficient for thwarting terrorism or the threat of terrorism is overplayed to begin with
viereier 4y ago
[flagged]
kneebonian 4y ago
> The problem is there are no reports on what counter terrorism units achieved, how many potential attacks they thwarted because it would jepoardize their work, I used to subscribe to this but then there was the governor's kidnapping plot in Minnesota that the FBI started blowing their own horn about and making such a big deal right up until it turned out that 6 of the 13 individuals involved were in fact members of the FBI. That kinda shook my trust in the whole "we can't talk about our success because it is top secret." Excuse
troyvit 4y ago
Yeah I agree. I'm starting to wonder about that mantra. If disclosing your successes endangers the work so much then maybe it's not such great work. The whole "there will always be bad actors" who want to "destroy our democracy" starts to wear thin when such high levels of secrecy are also eroding democracy. If governments opened up more about what they're doing they might lose a few more of their secret battles (and people will die) but maybe it would be worth it when you look at the overall preservation of democratic thought. That's the ramblings of a wannabe patriot though, and not a lawyer, and lawyers are deciding all this.

dsign 4y ago

Ha! I probably should get a mullvad account just to support them (even if I use my own VPN). Something that is not discussed much in Sweden is surveillance via the bank system. Banks have access to customers' transaction information and use it for two purposes: the "useful" feature of telling their customer how many of their purchases were e.g. food vs entertainment or house rent, and--of course--for advertising their products and services to their customers. And then the government has legislation to demand that banks mass-report certain information from private citizens, like revenue/expenses for financial services (i.e. interest paid on loans and capital earnings from financial assets) plus any international transactions. One small stumble down the slippery slope of surveillance, and the Swedish government will be able to build profiles of each citizen using the information collected by banks.

seanw444 4y ago
Make Monero popular (doomer wojack)
zirgs 4y ago
Can't they already build profiles using info from their IRS?
- kqr 4y ago
  I don't remember the details but Swedish law takes a fairly strong stance on preventing government agencies from sharing information with each other, for better and worse.
feckmore 4y ago
[flagged]
- prottog 4y ago
  Do you have any proof of this?
  - 4y ago

matthewdgreen 4y ago

I am currently reading through all of the legislation to try to figure out what the latest version of this actually requires from providers. Early versions talked about scanning for "grooming behavior" in textual conversations, but then also required that there would be no mass-scanning of communications: this seems obviously contradictory. What's frustrating about these laws is how vague everything is: I wish there were more high-quality summaries of the current legislation's terms. (If they exist, please post them here.)

mrshadowgoose 4y ago
The ambiguity is by design. It puts the onus on the implementer to be overzealous under fear of being criminally liable. This has the added benefit (to the slimy legislators pushing this garbage) of allowing them to scapegoat any perceived excesses onto corporations and developers.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
The legislation [1] is amazingly vague about the impact on end-to-end encrypted systems. In fact the string "encryption" appears twice, and only once in the body of the text (in Paragraph 26 on page 27.) This paragraph basically says "it's ok to use end-to-end encryption" but does not actually stipulate an exemption for scanning technologies. Presumably this means you would need to somehow implement an effective scanner into your end-to-end encryption. The legislation gives no other guidance about how to do this, how secure it will be, or even a mild discussion of the tradeoffs. This is alarming because the bill also makes clear that the goal is to detect not only known and unknown CSAM using some technological measure, but also to detect textual content that represents "grooming behavior." Only the "known" CSAM detection approach has ever even been attempted in a production system (with significant limitations) and that system was not ultimately deployed due to technical and customer concerns. But as much as CSAM media scanning worries me, the idea of automated ML-based text analysis for something as vague as "grooming behavior" is frankly terrifying. And I haven't even considered the slippery slope that becomes visible the second you build text-analysis and reporting systems into encrypted communications. What is much more concerning than the legislation is the Impact Assessment [2], which is cited in the legislation to justify its reasoning. Specifically, the Impact Assessment recommends Option E, which is "mandatory scanning of all known and unknown CSAM, as well as textual detection of 'grooming behavior'" even in systems that deploy E2E encryption. Where the legislation is vague about E2E encryption, the impact assessment [2] leaves no scrap of unambiguity: it makes clear that the need for these mandatory scanning mechanisms is almost entirely a response to the increasing deployment of E2EE, and specifically cites Facebook's (still un-deployed) 2019 encryption announcement to support its argument for a mandatory scanning requirement. It uncritically cites Apple's (since withdrawn) CSAM scanner (p. 39) as an example of a balanced privacy solution. It cites vaguely to the existence of scanners capable of detecting unknown CSAM, barely acknowledging that such techniques are entirely at the hypothetical/research stage and may not be safe at all. Finally it provides a privacy analysis that somehow concludes that the privacy benefits "in protecting victims" naturally outweigh all other concerns that might pop up around the deployment of what will be the world's most powerful ML-based text and media mass-surveillance system for encrypted and unencrypted private messages. Because take note: while the authors don't use that terminology, readers should have no doubt: that is what the EU is proposing to build with this legislation. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:13e33abf-d209-11ec-a95f-01aa75ed71a1.0001.02/DOC_1&format=PDF https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:13e33abf-... [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52022SC0209 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

alphanullmeric 4y ago

Typical EU behaviour. Same ones constantly whining about how Swiss banks won’t adopt their financial surveillance policies. Governments love to call it transparency when trying to justifying violating other people’s privacy.

manuelabeledo 4y ago
This is in no way comparable. There is a case to be made against rich people trying to hide their wealth in Switzerland, while they live in an EU country. They are also the majority doing it, as no average Joe can. Weakening cryptography with the excuse of going after a minuscule percentage of the population, is about effectively considering any citizen a potential criminal.
- alphanullmeric 4y ago
  They’re comparable if your support of a policy doesn’t depend on who it’s targeted against. That’s what makes us different.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    Hiding money from tax agencies has one, and only one, reason to be, and it causes a net deficit for the majority of the population, as in taxes not being collected. The only people who loses when we target tax havens, are those evading taxes. Strong encryption benefits the majority of the population, as it strengthens security and privacy, for everything. Weak encryption would actually make it easier for certain criminals to operate, and it would punish regular people indiscriminately. > That’s what makes us different Then I would have to say that your take is superficial and naive.
    - alphanullmeric 4y ago
      No you’re just inconsistent. Force is only justified in response to force. Even when it would benefit you to access someone else’s money.

lifeinthevoid 4y ago

I am really worried about this. I feel completely helpless though, I am almost a 100% convinced this legislation will make it through. It will be the worst day in the history of the EU. Great to see this campaign though.

feckmore 4y ago
[flagged]
- carimura 4y ago
  weak encryption is weak for everyone.
  - feckmore 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Zetice 4y ago
      And thank you for your bootlicking. I wonder if the irony of creating new accounts just to comment on the uselessness of anonymity is lost on you or not…
- VulgarExigency 4y ago
  Account created 17 minutes ago? Can you hook me up with an astroturfing job feckmore?
- unity1001 4y ago
  Yeah. You can bet that they wont use it to spy on everyone for everything and they will use it only for 'pedophiles'. Just like how the patriot act only targeted terrorists... ... The naivete is mind boggling...
pfoof 4y ago
We will then go and use GPG and Tor, where's the problem

teekert 4y ago

I mean, who is going to stop me? Think about it: Who and how are they going to stop me from applying some math to my messaging. I’d almost say: Good luck. But it’s just too horrible to think what would be needed to prevent me from privately chatting with my partner. The threat of jail time? Total control of my devices? Wtf is this savage thing they are proposing? Do we envy China all of a sudden?

lilsoso 4y ago

If the law were to go through, would this imply that Swedish VPN traffic would likely be monitored? It seems impossible that the government could separate the traffic of its citizens for spying out of that of foreign nationals.

why_at 4y ago

Does anybody understand the ad that is just a long string of numbers? They give a translation but it still doesn't make sense to me. >9781529035698 >1 >12* >*We placed this ad here for you to start practicing private communication in a public setting. This could be good to know if the European Commission's chat control law becomes reality. What's even weirder is the numbers in the translation are different from the original.

MitchellCash 4y ago
It's the ISBN of Edward Snowden's book "Permanent Record: A Memoir of a Reluctant Whistleblower". The numbers in the poster differ because it's the ISBN of the Swedish translated copy of the book.
- why_at 4y ago
  Nice. I guess I should have tried googling it but I was convinced it was some kind of code.
- p1peridine 4y ago
  Unrelated to his book, but anyone else find Ed's last name mildly amusing? English is not my first language so when we say "Snowden", unless we really try to do an American English accent, it can sometimes sound like "Snowedii-n". His last name means: > English: habitational name from any of the many minor places called from hills where the snow lay long (Old English snāw ‘snow’ + dūn ‘hill’). [0] "To be snowed in": when you can't exit the property/house because of fallen snow. Keep that same thought but remove the snow element (still "stuck") and replace property with country. Now take "Snowden", but make the E longer and make it sound more like an I. Edward Snowed-in. One could say that he is snowed in, in another country. Similary, another NSA leakers name: Reality Winner. Not poking fun at their names, just pointing out the irony because of the situation they are/was in. [0]: https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=snowden https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=snowden

zirgs 4y ago

Think of the children - their privacy is going to be violated if whatever they post online triggers the scanner. Then some random stranger will read your kid's private messages. That chat control really looks like a creep magnet. What could possibly go wrong...

Anonboxis 4y ago

Articles about the new proposal do a really poor job at reporting what the specific regulation in question is. So here it is: 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...

trizuz 4y ago

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