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> 17. The Commission representatives noted that many companies, which participate in the EUIF, are concerned about their security and public image. In addition,

> 17. The Commission representatives noted that many companies, which participate in the EUIF, are concerned about their security and public image. In addition, the topics discussed in the EUIF are often of a sensitive, operational nature and disclosure could be exploited by malicious actors to circumvent detection mechanisms and moderation efforts by companies. Revealing some of the strategies and tactics of companies, or specific technical approaches also carries a risk of informing offenders on ways to avoid detection. The Commission representatives provided additional confidential information during the meeting with the Ombudsman inquiry team on why the list of experts could not be disclosed. If the goal of your company is to promote and get a wiretap on every single device and messenger app, IN SECRET, you should be concerned about your public image. I also suggest you should be also concerned human rights and your personal moral compass. Time to drag out these bastards to the light.

baz00 3y ago
I suspect the bastards are already well known and accepted bastards. What is going on here is the EU doesn't want to look like it consulted bastards and is coming up with arbitrary reasons to hide that.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Well, they are now. But honestly, it was surprising for me to discover that the people pushing for the wiretrap were actually only the ones selling wiretraps. I really expected some larger conspiracy.
  - amluto 3y ago
    Maybe you should try Occam’s Razor for conspiracies: the most straightforward conspiracy is likely to be the right one :) For example, one might imagine that eIDAS 2 isn’t backed by a consortium of would-be spies but is more likely backed by a small consortium of crappy CAs that are sick of being forced to comply with CA/B Forum rules and want regulation to override the rules. (The CA/B rules are very specific and extremely aggressively enforced. It’s not like the GDPR where you can apparently get away with messing around for quite a while. Multiple fairly large companies have had their CA operations effectively shut down by the CA/B Forum for noncompliance.)
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor isn't a perfectly clear guide. A 1984-like law for wiretraping every citizen looking for double-plus-ungood speech is way too evil to come from a motivation of selling more wiretraps. The people pushing it are societal vandals. That kind of thing should be persecuted as treason. You don't do treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's absurd.
      - derefr 3y ago
        > You don't do treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's absurd. Did you not hear about the Russian tanks that fell apart on their way to Ukraine because Russian soldiers had been looting parts of them to sell for vodka? Most treason isn't called out with a big neon sign and a confirm dialog reminding the actor that they're committing treason. From the inside, most treason just feels like workplace fraud/embezzlement, or like laziness, or like "office politicking" where your office happens to be "the state legislature." It's almost always just petty crime, that happens to have big consequences.
        dylan604 3y ago
        Does this mean because we've become accustomed to ignoring the petty crime treason, when the treason with a giant neon sign and an alert popup that says "THIS IS TREASON" shows up, we're too numb to take action on it?
        lazide 3y ago
        The petty crime isn't treason, generally. The poster is wrong. We're used to ignoring the pop-ups because of the steady escalation and increasing exhaustion. We're being frog boiled.
        lazide 3y ago
        Treason (in the US) has a specific meaning, which is knowingly aiding a (formal) enemy of the country you are a Citizen of - or explicitly committing acts of war against said country. Those soldiers selling tank parks for vodka weren't committing treason, they were corruptly selling military parts (to presumably NOT the enemy) to get drunk. Which is pretty terrible, and would likely get you shot or imprisoned in most armies. But isn't treason. Aiding a known spy of the enemy? Yes. Sending military supplies to the enemy? Yes. Working on behalf of the enemy (knowingly?) Yes, maybe. Depends on what you do. That might be Espionage, or being an unregistered agent of a foreign power. Both with serious penalties on their own.
  - Lord-Jobo 3y ago
    We are living in a global society that has been structured around the singular principle of individual enrichment, and have been for about 230 years, depending on where you live. The answer to almost all modern mysteries of human behavior will lie in that incentive structure one way or another. Why do people steal of defraud? The potential individual enrichment is higher. Why engage in corrupt short-termerisms like accepting bribes? individual enrichment. This is all the result of "greed is good" ^1 and its not sustainable. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-is-good-a-300-year-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/360265/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-i...
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      It's not "greed is good", it's "specialisation is an n-way mutual win".
      - partitioned 3y ago
        Who is the winner in this case?
      - riversflow 3y ago
        Is it good when people specialize in destructive things? There are people who specialize in human trafficing, different types of fraud, etc. Is that an n-way mutual losss?
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        Not exactly, I'd say. It is a mutual win for the people involved in the transactional aspect, but a tragedy for the victims. Having the ability to charge the prices you want for what you offer is a superb self-organising principle; it just isn't sufficient to describe everything we want. In this case: we should agree on certain common rules on what is off limits, but other than that we should get out of people's way so they can create value for each other.
      - thereisnospork 3y ago
  - derefr 3y ago
    What would the motivation be, for the rest of the actors in this conspiracy? If anything, I'd say the "conspiracy" — or at least, the tacit collusion — is on the other side of this battle. What few demographic studies we've done on the prevalence of pedophilia, say that something like 10% of men express some level of attraction toward children. (With almost none of them ever acting on this attraction, or mentioning it to anyone other than a psychiatrist.) So potentially 10% of men everywhere — scattered all throughout industry and government — have clear motivation to push back against the creation of laws that would see their proclivities discovered and persecuted. Of course, such people wouldn't out themselves by just defending the "rights of pedophiles" in any direct way. But they would act on any opportunity to ensure that mechanisms for "complete privacy" exist; and they would also stand behind others when they see them doing the same; and they would also learn all the rhetoric used by privacy advocates, and use it. (Yes, there are other people on the side of "no wiretaps" besides pedophiles. I'm not saying "we can ignore the people against wiretaps because they're all just pedophiles anyway." What I'm saying is more that, insofar as "10% of men" is an accurate measure, that's a big implicit voting interest bloc! Probably one larger than all the world's egalitarian "privacy advocates" put together! And so there has always — and will always — be this group with their thumb on the scale, tipping any democratic action in society away from panopticons, for that group's own protection.)
    - partitioned 3y ago
      This doesn't seem correct. Someone who has these desires but never acted on them wouldn't need privacy because they never did or intend to violate a law.
      - shwaj 3y ago
        Or, it assumes that the only reason they didn’t act on this inclination is due to the fear of punishment. Which omits the possibility that they don’t do it because they know it’s wrong. Edit: typo
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      There's a very obvious anti-wiretap argument that also happens to be very anti-pedophile: Children don't like to be watched. A panopticon would be the perfect device for a pedophile to abuse.
- sylware 3y ago
  "consulted bastards"? you mean that's why EU web is Big Tech only? Or you have to fill in dynamic PDF forms to get access to some critical services? You know the EU digital regulator should have been an US citizen from Big Tech...
14 3y ago
Security through obscurity has proven time and time again to not work.
omginternets 3y ago
I can't help but wonder what it would take for Europeans to develop a sense of mistrust in top-down governance.
- masswerk 3y ago
  For most of the time, the Commission seemed to be a reasonable (as in "voice of reason") counterweight to regional governments and their insanities. Having said that, the EU appears to be wearing off in weird directions, lately…
  - bradley13 3y ago
    Um, no. The EU parliament has occasionally been a counterweight to insanity. The EU commission has always shown its innate authoritarian tendencies. Wannabe little dictators, they are. Now that lobbiests have more effectively gotten their teeth into the parliament, I am honestly pessimistic about EU governance.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      The commission isn't even "wannabe dictators", it's just where national governments policy-launder all their unpopular bills to. If something is going to piss off their citizens[0], they make the Commission make them do it, then blame the EU. The specific reason why policy laundering is possible is because international organizations are only accountable to their member states and not citizens. Making them accountable to citizens means getting rid of those member state vetos and having direct elected Commissioners instead - i.e. moving closer to a federal model of Europe. In America, we used to appoint Senators rather than electing them, as a vestige of pre-federal America where states were supposed to actually be co-sovereigns. The result was that - once Americans figured out how to use their political power effectively - every state gubernatorial race became a proxy vote for Senate anyway. I suspect we need something like this to happen in the EU, where politicians precommit to specific Commissioner appointments, until this becomes enough of a problem that the EU decides to make Commissioners elected. [0] And, more generally, all EU citizens
  - 3y ago
matheusmoreira 3y ago
It's funny how these people are so concerned with their reputation. They're using children as political weapons to make citizens accept anything. They drag the reputation of anyone who opposes their total surveilance through the mud by accusing them of supporting heinous criminals.
dpedu 3y ago
Are enough people going to care, though? Apple already pulled off exactly this on iOS and didn't receive much public heat at all.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
miohtama 3y ago
The list is now published https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38205743#38205787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38205743#38205787

baz00 3y ago

I suspect the bastards are already well known and accepted bastards. What is going on here is the EU doesn't want to look like it consulted bastards and is coming up with arbitrary reasons to hide that.

marcosdumay 3y ago
Well, they are now. But honestly, it was surprising for me to discover that the people pushing for the wiretrap were actually only the ones selling wiretraps. I really expected some larger conspiracy.
- amluto 3y ago
  Maybe you should try Occam’s Razor for conspiracies: the most straightforward conspiracy is likely to be the right one :) For example, one might imagine that eIDAS 2 isn’t backed by a consortium of would-be spies but is more likely backed by a small consortium of crappy CAs that are sick of being forced to comply with CA/B Forum rules and want regulation to override the rules. (The CA/B rules are very specific and extremely aggressively enforced. It’s not like the GDPR where you can apparently get away with messing around for quite a while. Multiple fairly large companies have had their CA operations effectively shut down by the CA/B Forum for noncompliance.)
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor isn't a perfectly clear guide. A 1984-like law for wiretraping every citizen looking for double-plus-ungood speech is way too evil to come from a motivation of selling more wiretraps. The people pushing it are societal vandals. That kind of thing should be persecuted as treason. You don't do treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's absurd.
    - derefr 3y ago
      > You don't do treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's absurd. Did you not hear about the Russian tanks that fell apart on their way to Ukraine because Russian soldiers had been looting parts of them to sell for vodka? Most treason isn't called out with a big neon sign and a confirm dialog reminding the actor that they're committing treason. From the inside, most treason just feels like workplace fraud/embezzlement, or like laziness, or like "office politicking" where your office happens to be "the state legislature." It's almost always just petty crime, that happens to have big consequences.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Does this mean because we've become accustomed to ignoring the petty crime treason, when the treason with a giant neon sign and an alert popup that says "THIS IS TREASON" shows up, we're too numb to take action on it?
        lazide 3y ago
        The petty crime isn't treason, generally. The poster is wrong. We're used to ignoring the pop-ups because of the steady escalation and increasing exhaustion. We're being frog boiled.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Treason (in the US) has a specific meaning, which is knowingly aiding a (formal) enemy of the country you are a Citizen of - or explicitly committing acts of war against said country. Those soldiers selling tank parks for vodka weren't committing treason, they were corruptly selling military parts (to presumably NOT the enemy) to get drunk. Which is pretty terrible, and would likely get you shot or imprisoned in most armies. But isn't treason. Aiding a known spy of the enemy? Yes. Sending military supplies to the enemy? Yes. Working on behalf of the enemy (knowingly?) Yes, maybe. Depends on what you do. That might be Espionage, or being an unregistered agent of a foreign power. Both with serious penalties on their own.
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  We are living in a global society that has been structured around the singular principle of individual enrichment, and have been for about 230 years, depending on where you live. The answer to almost all modern mysteries of human behavior will lie in that incentive structure one way or another. Why do people steal of defraud? The potential individual enrichment is higher. Why engage in corrupt short-termerisms like accepting bribes? individual enrichment. This is all the result of "greed is good" ^1 and its not sustainable. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-is-good-a-300-year-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/360265/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-i...
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It's not "greed is good", it's "specialisation is an n-way mutual win".
    - partitioned 3y ago
      Who is the winner in this case?
    - riversflow 3y ago
      Is it good when people specialize in destructive things? There are people who specialize in human trafficing, different types of fraud, etc. Is that an n-way mutual losss?
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Not exactly, I'd say. It is a mutual win for the people involved in the transactional aspect, but a tragedy for the victims. Having the ability to charge the prices you want for what you offer is a superb self-organising principle; it just isn't sufficient to describe everything we want. In this case: we should agree on certain common rules on what is off limits, but other than that we should get out of people's way so they can create value for each other.
    - thereisnospork 3y ago
- derefr 3y ago
  What would the motivation be, for the rest of the actors in this conspiracy? If anything, I'd say the "conspiracy" — or at least, the tacit collusion — is on the other side of this battle. What few demographic studies we've done on the prevalence of pedophilia, say that something like 10% of men express some level of attraction toward children. (With almost none of them ever acting on this attraction, or mentioning it to anyone other than a psychiatrist.) So potentially 10% of men everywhere — scattered all throughout industry and government — have clear motivation to push back against the creation of laws that would see their proclivities discovered and persecuted. Of course, such people wouldn't out themselves by just defending the "rights of pedophiles" in any direct way. But they would act on any opportunity to ensure that mechanisms for "complete privacy" exist; and they would also stand behind others when they see them doing the same; and they would also learn all the rhetoric used by privacy advocates, and use it. (Yes, there are other people on the side of "no wiretaps" besides pedophiles. I'm not saying "we can ignore the people against wiretaps because they're all just pedophiles anyway." What I'm saying is more that, insofar as "10% of men" is an accurate measure, that's a big implicit voting interest bloc! Probably one larger than all the world's egalitarian "privacy advocates" put together! And so there has always — and will always — be this group with their thumb on the scale, tipping any democratic action in society away from panopticons, for that group's own protection.)
  - partitioned 3y ago
    This doesn't seem correct. Someone who has these desires but never acted on them wouldn't need privacy because they never did or intend to violate a law.
    - shwaj 3y ago
      Or, it assumes that the only reason they didn’t act on this inclination is due to the fear of punishment. Which omits the possibility that they don’t do it because they know it’s wrong. Edit: typo
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    There's a very obvious anti-wiretap argument that also happens to be very anti-pedophile: Children don't like to be watched. A panopticon would be the perfect device for a pedophile to abuse.
sylware 3y ago
"consulted bastards"? you mean that's why EU web is Big Tech only? Or you have to fill in dynamic PDF forms to get access to some critical services? You know the EU digital regulator should have been an US citizen from Big Tech...

14 3y ago

Security through obscurity has proven time and time again to not work.

omginternets 3y ago

I can't help but wonder what it would take for Europeans to develop a sense of mistrust in top-down governance.

masswerk 3y ago
For most of the time, the Commission seemed to be a reasonable (as in "voice of reason") counterweight to regional governments and their insanities. Having said that, the EU appears to be wearing off in weird directions, lately…
- bradley13 3y ago
  Um, no. The EU parliament has occasionally been a counterweight to insanity. The EU commission has always shown its innate authoritarian tendencies. Wannabe little dictators, they are. Now that lobbiests have more effectively gotten their teeth into the parliament, I am honestly pessimistic about EU governance.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    The commission isn't even "wannabe dictators", it's just where national governments policy-launder all their unpopular bills to. If something is going to piss off their citizens[0], they make the Commission make them do it, then blame the EU. The specific reason why policy laundering is possible is because international organizations are only accountable to their member states and not citizens. Making them accountable to citizens means getting rid of those member state vetos and having direct elected Commissioners instead - i.e. moving closer to a federal model of Europe. In America, we used to appoint Senators rather than electing them, as a vestige of pre-federal America where states were supposed to actually be co-sovereigns. The result was that - once Americans figured out how to use their political power effectively - every state gubernatorial race became a proxy vote for Senate anyway. I suspect we need something like this to happen in the EU, where politicians precommit to specific Commissioner appointments, until this becomes enough of a problem that the EU decides to make Commissioners elected. [0] And, more generally, all EU citizens
- 3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago

It's funny how these people are so concerned with their reputation. They're using children as political weapons to make citizens accept anything. They drag the reputation of anyone who opposes their total surveilance through the mud by accusing them of supporting heinous criminals.

dpedu 3y ago

Are enough people going to care, though? Apple already pulled off exactly this on iOS and didn't receive much public heat at all.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

miohtama 3y ago

The list is now published https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38205743#38205787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38205743#38205787