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Let yourself be monitored: EU governments to agree on Chat Control
- derelicta 2y agoClearly the Bourgeois State is capable of protecting our civic rights
- CalRobert 2y agoSo I won't be able to use Signal to send pictures?
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoNope. Either you agree to the terms or the picture/video function will be disabled.
- aborsy 2y agoWhat if the app refuses to provide those functionalities?
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoI am guessing they will be compelled to do so. Signal said they will pull out of the EU.
- gizajob 2y agoWhat if you’re in the UK? I have no idea if we’re still implementing EU ideas like this, or if Signal being based in the EU will cause a blanket sweep. It’s also almost hilarious that the centre of the EU in Belgium will hoover up all the child pornography in Europe. Not like Belgium is a hotspot for that or anything… and not like it will end up with gazillions of images of nude children regardless of them being intended for pornography or not.
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoI am not sure. I think you guys in the UK have your own bill regarding EtoE coming up.
- gizajob 2y agoProbably. Except we have no money to pay for it.
- Manabu-eo 2y agoJust put it inside a zip and then you can send it. Maybe some plugin will be made to automatically unzip files and show contents.
- CalRobert 2y agoI could build from source I guess. Or we’re back to usenet-style text encoding of images
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoNations ruling to control the Internet as they see fit just makes me hope, "the more you tighten your grip, the more more star systems will slip through your fingers." The pretense of control feels ridiculous. Trying to force your state upon the entire online universe stands a chance of normalizing non Big Tech routes, creates a moral ground for e2e encryption to be even more visible & more of a cause.
- xjay 2y agoEU: In the name of the EU government, you are all under arrest. Democracy: It's treason, then.
- ultra_nick 2y agoThe EU governments will ruin the lives of random innocent people with buggy AI. Look what happened yesterday in the UK: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/uk-woman-mistaken-as-shoplifter-by-facewatch-now-she-s-banned-from-all-stores-with-facial-recognition-tech/ar-BB1naMzD?ocid=BingNewsSerp https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/uk-woman-mistaken-as-s...
- Rinzler89 2y agoUK is not EU anymore. And UK was a surveillance state since a long time now. Luckily here on the mainland we don't have these issues (yet).
- gizajob 2y agoAre you sure about that?? The EU is about to swing politically quite far to the right in a couple of weeks time. Chat control is just the beginning.
- jokethrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- Fauntleroy 2y agoIt's a bit of a stretch to suggest both sides are "socialist" bastards, isn't it?
- gizajob 2y agoThe EU is pretty weird ideologically I think. It somehow manages to neutrally combine every ideological position into one while cancelling them out somehow. It’s like centrist, communist, and strangely fascist while being warmly benign and benevolent all at the same time. But beyond this, it’s clear that its only ideological position has become “more EU power centred on opaque bodies in Brussels, whatever it is we just need more EU. We are blind to anything that is outside of that. Speak to the unelected president of Europe if you don’t like it”.
- pelagicAustral 2y agoI wonder if it will apply to politicians as well, or is it just for us, lesser people...
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoThey have the option to opt out. It's not written in this particular blog post but it was part of the original proposal. I don't see why they would not have kept it in there.
- ai_what 2y agoThe logic doesn't even make sense. "Save the children, except of course the politician's children". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063025
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoYou lesser people. Government officials and agents will need chat systems that are exempt, so they can officiate and agentize. Surely that's plain to see? Don't worry, they've promised not to use it to groom kids or anything. In all seriousness, what prevents this from just being ignored and people using open source software? Is it that the EU will prohibit open source chat from being sold on the various app stores?
- betaby 2y agoPeople won't use free software. Proprietary software is enforce by (self)regulation. I.e. you can't use banking apps of rooted android. Some banks won't allow Linux Firefox and so on.
- pseudalopex 2y ago> In all seriousness, what prevents this from just being ignored and people using open source software? Is it that the EU will prohibit open source chat from being sold on the various app stores? The European Commission proposal said providers of software application stores should be made subject to obligations to take certain reasonable measures.[1] It seems likely removing non compliant apps would be considered reasonable. Commercial open source apps would be more likely to comply with the requirements than non commercial closed source apps I think. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0209 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoCommenting on my own link but to go from from GDPR to this, I am honestly dumbfounded and quite upset. And then some sociologist somewhere wonders why trust in governments is plummeting around the world.
- violet13 2y agoThe US was historically built on the idea that free enterprise, for all its warts, is less bad than governments meddling in your life. Much of modern Europe is built on the opposite idea: that governments know better and that private enterprise is inherently corrupt. I don't want to pick sides in that debate, but it amazes me how wonderfully ahistorical it is. The US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments; Europe, on the other hand... Anyway, the disconnect you allude to isn't a disconnect if you consider it from this angle. GDPR is meant to protect you from private businesses. Chat control is supposed to protect you (and the state) from online predators. It was at no point about protecting you from the government.
- andrewxdiamond 2y ago> US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments Yeah except the founding story of the country
- violet13 2y ago[flagged]
- quartesixte 2y agoYeah the Revolution gets hyped a lot but if you take a step back it was “anddd they taxed us too much time to take up arms.” Which to the colonies was tantamount to tyranny but the world hadn’t yet seen tyranny the way it would see it post Industrial Revolution.
- eesmith 2y agoAnd the California Genocide ... And the confiscation of indigenous land and forced expulsion of those people ... And state constitutions which prohibited Blacks from moving in ... Institutionalized Jim Crow-era race-based restrictions, including Sundown Towns and redlining... The forced expulsion of Chinese-Americans from Tacoma, by white supremacists including the mayor, judge and city councilors, which became the method used to further Chinese expulsion in the US West. Oh, and the Japanese detainment camps in WWII ... Nope, no history of oppressive governments in the US.
- chadsix 2y agoYou can literally just self host and run open source software and it will be the same experience or even better since you won't have your meta data spied on at the same time.
- gizajob 2y agoYou can, but the girls you want to send nudes to you aren’t going to get round to installing your open source software on their iPhones. Or even manage to if they were inclined.
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoThat is the problem. You can opt out, roll out your own thing, but try and ask your friends and family to switch.
- rexpop 2y ago> send nudes Unless this is a synecdoche for something else, I'm not worried about it. Computers can sneeze out superficial 2D digital reproductions of women for less than a dime a dozen. Real, live people are so much more interesting to interact with on that level. For that, we meet through public institutions (aka "pubs", eg bars/clubs/churches/schools) as members of a society. I'm just saying that if you're some kind of renegade evading authoritarian surveillance, you probably recognize that life is too short to spend engaging oxytocin production over some pixels.
- vages 2y ago> Now is the time to take to the barricades for privacy and secure encryption! How? I have signed a few petitions, but living in Norway, I do not have a representative to write to
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoThis ship has sailed to be honest. This post is just a rant and it seems nothing will stop this this time.
- matricaria 2y agoTime to set up my own Matrix/XMPP server.
- stevenicr 2y agoPlease do. I have spent several days the past 2 weeks trying to get another one setup. Somehow the docs are worse today than they were a year or so ago. As far as I can tell help with issues installing/running is still only done in the chat rooms, which is great if people have the right answer at that very moment.. however a basic phpbb forum or bbpress from 20 years ago would be a better experience. We definitely need more people installing it and putting out info on what what works and how to do things since so much of it left to draconion things like postgres docs and nginx docs - which are not great either. I think I have a new one setup and running, but the complexities of nginx and a separate domain for the element web has put me off another week at least (and being asking to switch support chat rooms since it's now not a synapse issue it's something else) I will say it's pretty great when it's running (for a long while, pruning and vacuuming and a spinning / non-ssd drive have led to my previous install being canned)
- Arathorn 2y agowhich instructions have you been following? they should not have regressed…
- stevenicr 2y agoI saved some of the commands and urls I needed to go through the docs: https://globaladvancedmedia.com/weblog/2024/matrix-synapse-2024-install-one-a/ https://globaladvancedmedia.com/weblog/2024/matrix-synapse-2... (can update that with more info given time) I'd be happy to record video of the processes to see the confusion I end up running into if it would help make docs better for the community. I started with the matrix-synapse and got lost in nginx configs then went to other websites instructions to try to patch it up to work - and to the synapse chat and then to caddy then back to nginx and then wishing there was forums instead of chat - and wish I could pay someone I could trust to help but you can't offer money in the chat - which is a good rule - but I don't know, haven't gotten to the part where I test the options in element and such yet, so much. I did have a running system for over a year that I put together on debian 10 - so I know it's possible.. just for me it's like 1 out of 3 attempts to install on a new server, maybe I'm just not cut out for nginx / caddy / certbot and the like, I don't know why they all seem so hard and working with tech help via phpbb forums 20 years ago seemed like a better experience.
- lxe 2y agoCan't meta, signal, etc force their hand by simply disabling their services in europe?
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoI don't see how that would benefit them to go against this since their business is to monetize their user's data as much as possible. If anything, this is probably a new revenue stream. Now they can get all the data on behalf of the EU and use it as they want.
- ben_w 2y agoIn theory, sure. In practice, Meta's entire business model is to waste everyone's time by inserting advertising in the middle of what would otherwise be friendly conversation, so if they did switch Europe off, then everyone in Europe would have a more pleasant life and Meta would get less money — nobody would clamour for the stuff to be switched back on. I suspect Meta knows this. Signal might care enough about the principle, but even then the services are too easily substituted to matter to anyone else.
- latexr 2y agoAs if Meta would care. Facebook’s business model is to invade your privacy to advertise to your face for profit. Since this proposal would invade your privacy but not take away profit from Meta, they have zero reason to care. I find it hard to believe the CEO who called users “dumb fucks” would oppose on principle.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoSome of these companies love to scan your messages and content very much.
- 9dev 2y agoAs a EU citizen, this makes me so god-darn angry. The parliament tries it again, and again, relentlessly, against every single legal or technical advisor. And there is nothing I can do about it, not even voting. The EU claims to be democratic, but actual legislation is passed without much democratic input. No matter how the vote turns out, there will be enough support left for laws like this. Always. And if this iteration won’t pass, they will modify and retry. Until they eventually, but inevitably, succeed. So it’s only a matter of time. And I know this, we all do, and yet am fundamentally impotent about it. It’s infuriating.
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoMaybe that is the kick in the guts needed to really move to a decentralized chat application that literally cannot be compelled to provide data since it doesn't have any.
- garbageoverflow 2y agoEU would just force the client to do client-side scanning. But then again, if the client is open-source: fork, compile, repeat.
- weikju 2y agoDown the line obviously, is the death of general purpose computing where you canNOT do that, or canNOT installed non-signed applications (e.g. iOS but for all computers).
- switch007 2y agoSome people reading this might get the impression that the EU Parliament is not a popularly- and directly-elected legislative body with votes every 5 years... That aside, what kind of democratic input would you like? Swiss style? Do you write to your MEP~s?
- Deukhoofd 2y agoIt's a particularly amusing statement when the elections for EU Parliament are next week, from June 6th til 9th.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y agoDoes this affect us if we chat through a non-EU country via VPN? And through a combo of non-EU VPN and non-EU chat service?
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoVPN won't save you this is CSS(client side scanning), the scan happens before the encryption of the message/image/video before being sent to the servers.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoAt some point they will figure out, that people use VPNs to access messengers. Then they will go after the VPNs. Think of the ChIldReN! And the TeRrOrIsTs!!11 And then we will have a situation here similar to China, where most VPNs do not work, and assumingly only state-cooperating ones work, but are actually illegal now.
- brokenmachine 2y agoI guess the children in China are really safe?
- raxxorraxor 2y agoWith this it would still be enough to just use an OS that lets you decide what to install. Namely not iOS, Android, ChromeStuff, Windows S or these other shitty locked down environments big tech companies sell to naive users. Despite the technical possibilities, these bills should not be accepted and in my opinion directly contradict European rights. If they do not, these rights don't hold any value because the case is that obvious.
- jrexilius 2y agoNot sure about this current proposal but the previous one was on-the-phone based, which Apple double-timed into production so capability is there for EU to access when they finally flip the switch. That proposal would mean that it is Apple and Google that would provide access to your data before any apps or VPNs saw it (i.e. at the OS of the phone level). This new proposal sounds like maybe they backtracked on that and will just coerce the app and platforms?... not sure.
- pheggs 2y agoI have been thinking for a while that one goal of the GDPR could have been to combat foreign big tech companies within the EU. This seems like quite a shift if privacy was genuinely the main concern. Am I missing something here?
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoI have some problems, hope someone corrects or enlightens me: > images and videos sent to others will be scanned automatically and possibly reported to the EU and the police. I would like to know what exactly “reported to the EU” is. As far as I know, EU is not some nebulous eye in the sky, and certainly is not in the business of judging file uploads. Thus, a new body of authority needs to be formed, its competencies defined, as well as the rules of it interacting with the member states. By necessity, this upload judge won’t be sifting or monitoring any individual Jean-Paul Mrkvička across the platforms. More likely, it will monitor how much suspicious stuff gets reported from which platform, and go after the outliers. Say, Telegram would be far more likely to raise the sus-o-meter than iMessage. Then, it remains to be seen how the said organ would deal with suspected under-reporting by the platform or conflicts with GDPR or, say, German privacy laws which are stronger in places. Then the question about the police. Which police is it supposed to be? Europol? Local police in the member states? The latter will surely invite the inevitable increase in mandatory paperwork and bogus reports. After a few false positives, I bet if the police gets handed down reports and those reports are not about people already suspected from some other sources, they will be swept under the rug and allowed to rot by any police officer with a little bit of wrinkly brain. It’s as if they don’t already have enough paperwork to deal with and, you know, real actual crimes to solve. Sure they will come knocking a couple times to innocent folks who sent beach photos with their kids in frame to the in-laws, but that’s until they find ways to work around these reports. Correct me if I’m wrong, please, but I feel pretty confident it will go this way. > images and videos that are deemed potentially suspicious by ‘artificial intelligence’ technology. This is some unbounded optimism about reliability and accuracy of any “AI” to date, must I say.
- pseudalopex 2y agoThe European Commission's proposal included a body it called the EU Centre to work with Europol.[1] The report template includes IP address, port number, postal code, GPS data, username, email address, phone number, mailing address, profile information, other email addresses, other phone numbers, billing information, last login date, and other user information. Why did you assume it would not? Reports would be forwarded to Europol and member state law enforcement authorities. > The latter will surely invite the inevitable increase in mandatory paperwork and bogus reports. After a few false positives, I bet if the police gets handed down reports and those reports are not about people already suspected from some other sources, they will be swept under the rug and allowed to rot by any police officer with a little bit of wrinkly brain. Was this meant to comfort anyone? > It’s as if they don’t already have enough paperwork to deal with and, you know, real actual crimes to solve. Child sexual abuse is a real crime. Some child pornography investigations have led to prosecutions for child sexual abuse. Many legislators, police, prosecutors, and members of the public believe even virtual child pornography is a slippery slope to real child sexual abuse and reject any evidence pointing the other way. They consider possession a real crime even if you do not. Law enforcement authorities supported this proposal. Most oppose surveillance rarely or never. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0209 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- alexey-salmin 2y agoAgain?? I guess the plan is to try until they succeed. When one victory is enough and attempts are unlimited...
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoThe infinite headed hydra of politicians using Save The Children to slaughter privacy is such a downer. There's seemingly no governance against bad governance; the war never ends, no progress is made to enshrine privacy ever. SOPA and PIPA in the USA took massive internet mobilization & blackouts to shut down but wait a couple years & FOSTA gets passed. There's always another head to the hydra, always more assholes.
- DuskHorizon 2y ago[dead]
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoMight be a bit of a problem wrt GDPR or doctor or lawyer confidentiality, or possibly even just working under NDA. It would preclude using those chat apps.
- camgunz 2y agoOnline grooming is obviously very bad, but it doesn't seem like it's happening very much. Hope for Justice reports ~8,600 cases in 2022 [0], but there were 72.5 million kids in the US that year [1], so that's just .01% of kids. Like, if this is the threshold, we need to go after gun violence and car dependence, because in 2023 firearms killed 4,733 kids and cars killed 4,048 [2]. We need to go after air pollution (wood and gas stoves) which are crazy murderous to kids [3]. Do we really think we'll make a significant dent in that (very low) number by backdooring encrypted messaging apps? Do we even know how much of this is happening over encrypted messaging apps vs. just straight up X and Instagram? Honestly all I want here is an actual fig leaf, not someone spraying a fig leaf air freshener, not someone singing a whispery folk song about a fig leaf from long ago, not someone opening a can of fig leaf La Croix. [0]: https://hopeforjustice.org/news/online-grooming-and-child-sexual-exploitation-in-the-u-s/ https://hopeforjustice.org/news/online-grooming-and-child-se... [1]: https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp [2]: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/2023-june-cgvs-u-s-gun-violence-in-2021-v3.pdf https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/202... [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8296171/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8296171/
- bradlys 2y agoNone of this is about kids. No one cares about the kids. It’s about finding a boogeyman to exploit for control.
- thefz 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- raxxorraxor 2y agoAs a "citizen" of the EU you cannot even sue against the EU violating your rights. The flaws of the EUs are apparent. Not that nations outside of it necessarily fare better, just look at the UK, but this was done to not have any democratic input on surveillance.
- frizlab 2y agoRemember when Apple did this while at least trying to keep privacy? Well now it’ll be mandatory without the privacy. Yay EU!
- talldayo 2y ago> Remember when Apple did this while at least trying to keep privacy? No
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thefz 2y agoRemember when Apple (who always toots the privacy horn) leaked photos that some users explicitly deleted 10 years prior? Even if the intentions were good (and I doubt it), there's always human error. That's why we must fight against any surveillance tech.
- DavideNL 2y agoTitle: “‘Let yourself be monitored’: EU governments to agree on Chat Control with user “consent” [updated]”
- bun_terminator 2y agoAh... wednesday again, and the EU making our lives worse. It's all they do. Literally 100% of EU is negative.
- brokenmachine 2y agoI'm happy they forced Apple to use usbc.
- raverbashing 2y agohow to say "I only know about the EU via HN headlines" through different words And might I also add: regulation voids that are picked up by companies can result in worse results (though of course I'm 100% P.O. about the proposed "big brother" implementation)
- bun_terminator 2y agoI also know the EU well from the money they take from me
- raverbashing 2y ago"What did the Romans ever do for us" am I right? Though of course naturally people can search what they think is better for them. I bet you would have a lot of fun in lower regulation places (though usually by having a remote job in one of the 'boring and full of red tape' countries)
- bun_terminator 2y agoI will live in my country, the country I was born in. EU is just one of many cancers eating it alive
- raxxorraxor 2y agoI believe Rome didn't survive either. And in this case they do not build roads, they are actively trying to scan my private communication.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- brokenmachine 2y agoI don't have kids. Can I opt out?
- lencastre 2y agoSo,… what does that mean for Signal, WhatsApp,…?
- mirshko 2y agoI've heard arguments in favour of this level of surveillance going a bit like; "I have nothing to hide and I think this is a serious problem, so I'm okay with the EU scanning my messages if it helps fight CSAM" And if you argue against in case of wanting privacy the counter-argument ends up being; "Do you think CSAM isn't a problem or you're on the side of the pedos?" Don't see how to argue with a person who simply doesn't care about the right to privacy or these regulations being the first step to mass surveillance. I.e. like someone wrote "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse"
- White_Wolf 2y agoI had this discussion with some mates in the office. I just told them that I don't want to share the t<>ts pics my wife sends me and the d<>ck picks I'm sending her when we're away for work.