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EU plan to scan private messages for child abuse meets fresh scandal
- fsflover 3y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473 EU Commissioner as double agent of foreign interference (patrick-breyer.de)
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoSame issue but different topic. Earlier was about bad behavior by individual officials. This is discussing bad behavior by the agencies. It includes stuff that wasn't touched on in the earlier article.
- nixass 3y agohttps://archive.ph/hrpes https://archive.ph/hrpes
- kelnos 3y agoWhat an unfortunate URL...
- giantrobot 3y agoApropos generated path on that URL.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoSort of reminds me of the famous "Opinion Polls" segment of Yes, Prime Minster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks
- bloopernova 3y agoAstonishing. The EU was caught using targeted ads in twitter to get support for a very intrusive law. Smells really bad, but I'm too cynical to believe that anyone responsible will face consequences.
- varispeed 3y ago> will face consequences. Probably a bonus will happen to them.
- Amezarak 3y agoMake sure to bookmark this for the next discussion where people insist nothing like this can happen in Europe.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoThat's the funny thing about tribalism, it's just a different flavour of the same base human corruptibility (or, to use less aggressive wording: opinion, bias, or subjectivity). The US is no better or worse than Europe, it's just a different alignment of values. The "better or worse" argument is based entirely on each individual's alignment being closer or further away from one alignment or the other. This will come from personal experience, highly affected by the boundary the individual grew up within - which can affect can ones biases in both directions.
- kaba0 3y agoI mean, it didn’t happen. Obviously the EU is not without fault, but to be honest, I see more negatives around it, especially on HN than warranted.
- tremon 3y agoNeither did it not happen, it is only postponed and not shut down. These things will keep coming back until there are real consequences for tin-pot dictators pushing despotic legislation (and no, I'm not advocating for violence, I want them to be forced to publicly resign their post).
- eigenket 3y agoSaying "the EU" is wildly oversimplific. A more accurate interpretation (in my opinion) is one particularly stupid EU comissioner (Ylva Johansson, Commissioner for Home Affairs) who is pushing things way beyond her remit. The EU has mechanisms which can deal with this sort of nonsense, however. The comissioners can't pass laws themselves, only propose them. The EU parliament has to actually vote the law proposed by the commission into law and it seems unlikely for this one to pass. The EU parliament is directly elected by normal people, and is generally rather more in touch with reality than the commissioners are.
- fwungy 3y ago"It's for the children" Big red flag.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYeah. Politicians using children as arguments for total global surveillance is the epitome of bad faith. Leveraging children as political weapons should be considered a form of child abuse.
- thesnide 3y agoMass surveillance to combat terrorism is also making me think if the remedy is not as worse as the evil. I mean, terrorist are now laughing that they nicely annoyed 99.99% of the population that want to travel by air. We saw the rise of low cost terror, with a knife in a crowded space. I predict the "free2play" terror with simply wrongly alerting authorities to evacuate mass touristic areas. We live in a sad era were everyone is just either too afraid or too envious of his neightbors
- matheusmoreira 3y agoFinding the words "child", "terror", "drug" and "money launder" in any argument is evidence of bad faith. It's almost certain they're trying to manipulate people into giving up freedom for false security by appealing to the eternal bogeymen of society. Playing on people's fear to expand their own power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp... Just summarily dismiss any argument containing those words. Don't even engage, just expose this charade for everyone to see.
- throwaway290 3y agoWe should separate anti-abuse laws that don't compromise e2e (like Apple's hash matching) and laws that ban e2e. Once we do it we should fight for one against the other. If abuse is real and e2e is key to it, taking measures against abuse while keeping e2e is important. Fighting against any measure altogether is immoral
- rtkwe 3y agoWhat are actual laws you're thinking of that aren't attacks on end to end encryption? All of this is already highly illegal the difficulties are finding and prosecuting the criminals.
- throwaway290 3y agoFinding and prosecuting is the point? What made people do it before is mental illness. What makes people do it now more and more is additionally profit. The e2e apps and crypto is what drives their profit. But critically there are ways of keeping e2e without being complicit in crime. Things like Apple's hash matching or requiring all messaging apps to do on device scan are that. Pretending these compromises are unacceptable because they affect your privacy is a nonce move. You routinely compromise your privacy in much bigger ways in order to live in society, every time you are searched at security or present ID for verification etc, but when it comes to doing anything to help victims who unlike you can't even stand up for themselves you are suddenly the unyielding freedom fighter.
- kelnos 3y ago> Things like Apple's hash matching or requiring all messaging apps to do on device scan are that. No thanks. It's bad enough that our devices often play fast and loose with our privacy as it is, but don't want my devices to be violating my privacy in ways where errors can have legal consequences for me. Beyond that, these sorts of systems will always be increased in scope by people who want to abuse them for their own purposes.
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- shrubble 3y agoI am sure they would never exempt themselves from such monitoring, correct? Given the Dutroux scandal, which revealed some rather shady behavior on the part of multiple people in positions of power, seems likely there would be rules for the little people but not others.
- ballenf 3y agoJust after they open to public inspection all the deliberation, discussion and industry lobbying behind weakening encryption on the basis that people who have nothing to hide shouldn't care.
- karaterobot 3y agoI'm simply astonished to find that a body which condemns the use of microtargeted Facebook ads to influence elections would do this. I'm equally shocked to find out that they would commission a fake survey to provide pseudoscientific cover to their self-serving positions. It's almost enough to shatter my faith that people in government are working on my behalf, and make me think they're all just hypocrites. Next, I might start to question the validity of surveys on political topics, but fortunately I'm still pretty naive and credulous.
- throwawayqqq11 3y agoWhen you stop your train of thought at "polticians are evil" you havent found the root but only a symptom. What corrupts people in any position and how would we keep our institutions as clean as possible? (Hint: It might have something to do with democracy and "working on your behalf".) Edit: Where does the notion, that an EU body is behind the campagne come from?
- api 3y ago> What corrupts people in any position Incentives rule the world. The question to ask is what the incentive structure of a politician's world looks like.
- Y_Y 3y agoI blame the electorate.
- mandmandam 3y agoSure, blame the victim.
- throwaway092323 3y agoIt's possible to be both a victim and a perpetrator, for example, if you give power to someone who uses that power to hurt you and others.
- pembrook 3y agoIf Europeans are going to voluntarily allow their government to continuously scan all of their private data 24/7, can the rest of the world stop wasting time caring about GDPR please? Moving every cloud service to be EU-hosted is going to look really stupid once it means you’ve just centralized all worlds data under a 24/7 foreign surveillance & espionage dragnet. If I had to guess, I’d say the amount of money spent globally on lawyers re: GDPR must exceed the gross national product of Greece. For it to all backfire in this way would be quite humorous.
- Aerroon 3y agoUnfortunately, it's not the first time the EU had tried something like this either. >According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- MrRolleyes 3y ago[dead]
- eigenket 3y agoYou should read some of the discussion on this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473 This is largely being pushed by people related to an organisation called "Thorn". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473#37962743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37958473#37962743 Thorn seems to be related to US tech companies. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Palantir, are all mentioned on the wayback machine version of their website as "tech taskforce" mebers. My interpretation would be that US tech is pushing this law because they know there is money to be made here (providing the scanning systems and collecting as much data as they can).
- zosima 3y agoPeople are so enamored by the idea of EU, and cooperation across European borders, that they fail to see what kind of entity it really is, and what people control it. If this monster is not controlled it will grow to become another USSR, completely stifling all innovation in Europe, 24/7 censoring what is appropriate for citizens to read and see, while continuously spying on everyone, everywhere. It can't be allowed to continue.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MrRolleyes 3y ago[dead]
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoEuropean Parliament mostly works and has mostly curbed the EC's incompetence, ill-intent, overreach. The issue is the European Comission and the Council of Ministers that appoints them. The EC seems to progressively be filled by increasingly incompetent and unqualified comissioners. But more worrying for me is their increasing affinity with lobbying. Many legal systems across the EU explicitly prohibit lobbying not sure why we even allow it in the EU.
- adev_ 3y agoExactly. The main problem with the EU is that it is an entity with a construction aborted half-way. The EU parlement is a example of what the EU should be. The EU commission is not. The EU commission was literally intended as a temporary fix for the executive power on the road of a broader European federation. The federarion never happened. And is very unlikely to happen with the PPE (main European conservative party) and the extreme right dominating the political landscape.
- inglor_cz 3y agoEuropean federalism is very popular in Brussels, much less so elsewhere. Regardless of the fact that their politicians once signed treaties proclaiming a vague "ever closer Union", the nations themselves don't want to integrate to the same level as the US did. Any federalization proposal that would be subject to referenda would be shot down in a supermajority of member countries. The current state of things, "aborted half-way", is a consequence of social engineering that failed to take into account the possibility that its preferred endgame may not be attractive and that in democracies, going behind the back of the voters can only get you so far. The integration of the EU basically stopped once it became impossible to hide preparation of new treaties and legislation from the voters by distracting people by something else in the media. This is also case of the legislation we are talking about now. Of course the authors of Chat Control 2.0 would prefer to agree to the entire thing in darkness, but the Internet makes it very hard to conceal the plan.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoJust cut out the "for Child Abuse" part. They want to scan people's private messages. The reason doesn't matter.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoFrom their perspective it becomes a lot more difficult for opposing views to argue about when your response can simply be ‘so you support pedophiles?’
- throwaway092323 3y agoThat's really smart.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYeah. Which is why we should treat it as the smoke and mirrors it is. Just completely ignore their justification and avoid repeating those words on every news report. These politicians couldn't give less of a fuck about children. Politics and children do not belong in the same body of text. Finding the words "child", "terror", "drug" and "money launder" in any political text is evidence of bad faith and a perfectly valid reason to completely dismiss whatever's being said. It's almost certain they're trying to manipulate people into giving up freedom for false security by appealing to the eternal bogeymen of society. Communists were that bogeyman once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- idonotknowwhy 3y agoYep, in 2010,the Australian communications minister Steven Conroy literally said this to a journalist who question his child abuse internet filter. This is after a leaked draft of this black list came out with sites like wikilealks on it... Said something like "I don't support opting in to pedophilia"
- akira2501 3y agoPeople who trade in images of abuse should be punished on some level; however, they are the smallest part of the problem, the people who actually abuse children for the purposes of taking pictures are the real problem and I highly doubt you're going to catch them by scanning text messages. It's completely wasted effort and does nothing to stop pedophiles or to protect children.
- gosub100 3y agoDisclaimer: I acknowledge that this is a whataboutism argument. Why not use the phone to detect physical and verbal abuse? The microphone is always on for most users, we have algos that can detect the sound of an adult yelling, a child crying, and the percussive sound of a human hitting another human. If 2/3 of those sounds are detected, why not forward that to NCMEC for further review? It doesn't have to be "1 yell, 1 cry, break down the door", it could be a pattern detector that logs the times, the severity, and the mode. If it hears objects being thrown, people yelling, kids crying, why isn't that sufficient to call authorities? How come "think of the children" suddenly doesn't work anymore? I'm being 50% facetious here because obviously that's a huge privacy issue. But the same logic for CSAM scanning still applies nonetheless. Why only address 1/3 of abuse and ignore verbal/emotional, and physical? Those kids need justice too.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago> Why not use the phone to detect physical and verbal abuse? And adultery! Require married couples to register their handsets in the national register and detect when people have sex! And if the phones are too far apart, send morality police with a whip. Ffs.
- eep_social 3y agoActually it would be easier and more effective to register every handset and run a check any time two are close together but otherwise isolated. That way we get adultery but as an added bonus, also any extramarital sex, gay sex, kinky sex, or just generally any behavior between two people that we don’t approve of. /s
- gosub100 3y agoSo punching a child is just a lifestyle choice, like getting laid on the side?
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoI don’t know, is it?
- awsthr0w4y 3y agoThe first horseman of the Infocalypse has arrived.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoI often wonder if we’re emerging as a society that must agree on free speech but must also agree on ethical compromises. Extreme left and right wing views are both problematic and there is some validity to LE being unable to track electronic crime due to encryption. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust any proposed laws in their current state, but as a society we trust judges to sentence people for crimes, and referees to call foul in sport - I just wish there was the formation of a legitimate ethics committee which would act in good faith on society, because inevitably rights will erode and without one we will be left with less. Edit: I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but I’m interested to hear contrasting thoughts, please vocialize disagreements
- shawnz 3y agoThere is no objective morality, so any such ethics committee must have to make some trade-offs that are a matter of opinion. We can already mostly agree as a society that protecting civil liberties is more important than having zero crime: otherwise we wouldn't have freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and other things which make it easier to commit crimes.
- geraldwhen 3y agoMost of the world doesn’t have freedom of speech. You can absolutely be arrested and jailed for speech in Europe.
- gmerc 3y agoHave a chat with Alex Jones about the limits of free speech. Every country has for practical reasons of survival some limit on speech.
- notrlyskeptik 3y ago[dead]
- eigenket 3y agoThis is not really a "fresh" scandal, we had a hacker news discussion about exactly this 10 days ago.