6 ms·

Petition against EU chat control

213 points by regularjack 3y ago

mrtksn 3y ago
EU, UK and USA risk of being the most oppressive regimes because those countries actually have a culture and history of being able to enforce laws and rules. This will never stop with “protecting the children”. Very shortly they’ll start asking why we wouldn’t use the same technology against terrorism. don’t you want to be safe are you supporting terrorists that will say. The problem with terrorism is that it’s very easy for everyone to be categorized as a terrorist(notice how much many terrorists there is than terror attacks), and this needs very very wide access and total control over the public.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hruzgar 3y ago
this is crazy!
TheChaplain 3y ago
It's funny that every time one of the largest promoters tweets about it, she becomes fact checked[1]. Her name is Ylva Johansson, a swedish politician, and she seems to have rather questionable morals and ethics. [1]: https://twitter.com/YlvaJohansson/status/1712840885870698945 https://twitter.com/YlvaJohansson/status/1712840885870698945
monksy 3y ago
Why can't we just declare war on this. Find their entry points where they submit the data and just stuff their services until this gets rolled back? Edit: I know that's a pretty harsh and aggressive thing to say, but it's a protest against an police action that was forced upon people without consent.
- throwuxiytayq 3y ago
  If you get annoying enough, they'll turn this against you.
  - monksy 3y ago
    How so?
  - personomas 3y ago
    The EU governments (Germany, France, etc.) has become so extremely authoritative, that this truly might be true.
- petre 3y ago
  You mean report Ylva Johansson to the thought police?
logicchains 3y ago
We as the tech community have the power to prevent something like this by developing open software and hardware, and an anonymous P2P encrypted communication platform (that doesn't require anything like a phone number for creating an account). Even if they were able to ban people running unauthorized phones/computers, if we reached the point that open devices were cheap/easy enough to self-assemble there'd be nothing they could do to stop it (short of doing deep packet inspection on every single connection to disconnect any encrypted connection, which even China doesn't do as it's extremely impractical).
- fsflover 3y ago
  > anonymous P2P encrypted communication platform (that doesn't require anything like a phone number for creating an account) You mean https://geti2p.net https://geti2p.net?
- monksy 3y ago
  So the downside of this is that countries are moving to register the radio of the phone again an id. It's a cat and mouse attempt to identify who is doing what and to "stop the terroists".. it ends up that bad people just end up getting sim mules to register sims.
- croes 3y ago
  Then the governments will make the use of those softwares illegal.
gmuslera 3y ago
Not just an abstract "the government" that can scan your chats. This implies people all along the chain (from operators to politicians, for profit or power), private companies involved in this, processes (from sophisticated AIs to dumb pattern matching) labelling you, and future governments/policies that may reframe innocent present phrases with future meanings. Not just sign this petition, electorally punish every party and politician pushing this.
fsflover 3y ago
Related ongoing discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37880635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37880635
KittyUwuminati 3y ago
[flagged]
mjburgess 3y ago
I'd like to advance a more productive argument for pro-privacy tech people. Often the reply is to claim that governments are lying when they try to 'protect children' and the like. Having at least some experience with international police orgs, I can say that significant resources are dedicated to online crime (including CSAM) and their 'lived reality' is very much expending significant resources because e2e prevents low-cost surveillance. So the attack line that 'none of this is sincere' is actively unhelpful -- since so much of it is sincere, it comes across at best naïve. A better line, imv, is this: assume present goverments are entirely sincere. It doesnt matter. We cannot know the intentions of future governments. And we have good reasons to suppose that governments, in general, require extraordinary systems of checks-and-balances to be prevented from abuse of power. So I'd advise not attacking people who are, very often, actually thinking of the children -- you're just antagonising the people in power. Rather, invite them to help you defend the liberal order of individual human rights that prevent state abuse of power. As a matter of fact, they really arent actually trying to create a secret police. Enabling state abuse of power has a far far higher negative outcome than marginal increases to the difficulty of policing some crimes. In many cases, police agencies can find ways into criminal networks and can access messages using traditional policing. A better rhetorical strategy here is supporting policing, providing significant additional tech expert resources to police, significant funding for 'online detectives' -- whilst at the same time explaining the high risk against mass state incursion into all aspects of our lives.
- zoky 3y ago
  Not that I disagree with you at all, but what do you then say to the response that this is just a slippery slope fallacy?
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    It's not a fallacy if you have a causal mechanism. I think it's fairly well-evidenced by history that there are many mechanisms by which states 'backslide' into abuse (indeed, that's the term used today). Human rights are an invention of liberal states, hard won, against state power -- why have any at all?
  - 3y ago
wkat4242 3y ago
It's not so much stopscanningme as it is dontstartscanningme :) But totally agree. However I doubt this will help. The relevant politicians have already been paid off.
gmerc 3y ago
I don’t get why we can’t just define let’s say up to 100 people as private and more than 100 people as public when it comes to chat. The fact that we treat groups with 10.000 people on chat with the same level of privacy as 1:1 or 100 people seems like an unreasonable thing from a harm prevention alternative. There’s enough nuance in hanging out with your closest friends and acquaintances in private manners but not applying the same to 10.000 people. From a harm prevention perspective that would slow down the proliferation of material and distribution vectors a lot while maintaining practical privacy for 90% of usecases.
gumballindie 3y ago
I dont understand what they even want to achieve with this. People supporting terrorism are not even hiding anymore in europe - like literarily displaying their support for terrorist actions out in the open as if it’s some sort of democratic right - and the government wants to monitor _me_ and _my_ chats? Bruv..
lakomen 3y ago
How can I make sure that this site is legit?

213 points by regularjack 3y ago

EU, UK and USA risk of being the most oppressive regimes because those countries actually have a culture and history of being able to enforce laws and rules. This will never stop with “protecting the children”. Very shortly they’ll start asking why we wouldn’t use the same technology against terrorism. don’t you want to be safe are you supporting terrorists that will say. The problem with terrorism is that it’s very easy for everyone to be categorized as a terrorist(notice how much many terrorists there is than terror attacks), and this needs very very wide access and total control over the public.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hruzgar 3y ago

this is crazy!

TheChaplain 3y ago

It's funny that every time one of the largest promoters tweets about it, she becomes fact checked[1]. Her name is Ylva Johansson, a swedish politician, and she seems to have rather questionable morals and ethics. [1]: https://twitter.com/YlvaJohansson/status/1712840885870698945 https://twitter.com/YlvaJohansson/status/1712840885870698945

monksy 3y ago

Why can't we just declare war on this. Find their entry points where they submit the data and just stuff their services until this gets rolled back? Edit: I know that's a pretty harsh and aggressive thing to say, but it's a protest against an police action that was forced upon people without consent.

throwuxiytayq 3y ago
If you get annoying enough, they'll turn this against you.
- monksy 3y ago
  How so?
- personomas 3y ago
  The EU governments (Germany, France, etc.) has become so extremely authoritative, that this truly might be true.
petre 3y ago
You mean report Ylva Johansson to the thought police?

logicchains 3y ago

We as the tech community have the power to prevent something like this by developing open software and hardware, and an anonymous P2P encrypted communication platform (that doesn't require anything like a phone number for creating an account). Even if they were able to ban people running unauthorized phones/computers, if we reached the point that open devices were cheap/easy enough to self-assemble there'd be nothing they could do to stop it (short of doing deep packet inspection on every single connection to disconnect any encrypted connection, which even China doesn't do as it's extremely impractical).

fsflover 3y ago
> anonymous P2P encrypted communication platform (that doesn't require anything like a phone number for creating an account) You mean https://geti2p.net https://geti2p.net?
monksy 3y ago
So the downside of this is that countries are moving to register the radio of the phone again an id. It's a cat and mouse attempt to identify who is doing what and to "stop the terroists".. it ends up that bad people just end up getting sim mules to register sims.
croes 3y ago
Then the governments will make the use of those softwares illegal.

gmuslera 3y ago

Not just an abstract "the government" that can scan your chats. This implies people all along the chain (from operators to politicians, for profit or power), private companies involved in this, processes (from sophisticated AIs to dumb pattern matching) labelling you, and future governments/policies that may reframe innocent present phrases with future meanings. Not just sign this petition, electorally punish every party and politician pushing this.

fsflover 3y ago

Related ongoing discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37880635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37880635

KittyUwuminati 3y ago

[flagged]

mjburgess 3y ago

I'd like to advance a more productive argument for pro-privacy tech people. Often the reply is to claim that governments are lying when they try to 'protect children' and the like. Having at least some experience with international police orgs, I can say that significant resources are dedicated to online crime (including CSAM) and their 'lived reality' is very much expending significant resources because e2e prevents low-cost surveillance. So the attack line that 'none of this is sincere' is actively unhelpful -- since so much of it is sincere, it comes across at best naïve. A better line, imv, is this: assume present goverments are entirely sincere. It doesnt matter. We cannot know the intentions of future governments. And we have good reasons to suppose that governments, in general, require extraordinary systems of checks-and-balances to be prevented from abuse of power. So I'd advise not attacking people who are, very often, actually thinking of the children -- you're just antagonising the people in power. Rather, invite them to help you defend the liberal order of individual human rights that prevent state abuse of power. As a matter of fact, they really arent actually trying to create a secret police. Enabling state abuse of power has a far far higher negative outcome than marginal increases to the difficulty of policing some crimes. In many cases, police agencies can find ways into criminal networks and can access messages using traditional policing. A better rhetorical strategy here is supporting policing, providing significant additional tech expert resources to police, significant funding for 'online detectives' -- whilst at the same time explaining the high risk against mass state incursion into all aspects of our lives.

zoky 3y ago
Not that I disagree with you at all, but what do you then say to the response that this is just a slippery slope fallacy?
- mjburgess 3y ago
  It's not a fallacy if you have a causal mechanism. I think it's fairly well-evidenced by history that there are many mechanisms by which states 'backslide' into abuse (indeed, that's the term used today). Human rights are an invention of liberal states, hard won, against state power -- why have any at all?
- 3y ago

wkat4242 3y ago

It's not so much stopscanningme as it is dontstartscanningme :) But totally agree. However I doubt this will help. The relevant politicians have already been paid off.

gmerc 3y ago

I don’t get why we can’t just define let’s say up to 100 people as private and more than 100 people as public when it comes to chat. The fact that we treat groups with 10.000 people on chat with the same level of privacy as 1:1 or 100 people seems like an unreasonable thing from a harm prevention alternative. There’s enough nuance in hanging out with your closest friends and acquaintances in private manners but not applying the same to 10.000 people. From a harm prevention perspective that would slow down the proliferation of material and distribution vectors a lot while maintaining practical privacy for 90% of usecases.

gumballindie 3y ago

I dont understand what they even want to achieve with this. People supporting terrorism are not even hiding anymore in europe - like literarily displaying their support for terrorist actions out in the open as if it’s some sort of democratic right - and the government wants to monitor _me_ and _my_ chats? Bruv..

lakomen 3y ago

How can I make sure that this site is legit?