14 ms·

That Tweet links to this [1] description which, in glancing at the text, seems to indeed be accurate: ---- According to the latest draft regulation dated 28 M

That Tweet links to this [1] description which, in glancing at the text, seems to indeed be accurate: ---- According to the latest draft regulation dated 28 May (Council document 9093/24), which is presented as “upload moderation”, users of apps and services with chat functions are to be asked whether they accept the indiscriminate and error-prone scanning and possibly reporting of their privately shared images, photos and videos. Previously unknown images and videos are also to be scrutinised using “artificial intelligence” technology. If a user refuses the scanning, they would be blocked from sending or receiving images, photos, videos and links (Article 10). End-to-end encrypted services such as Whatsapp or Signal would have to implement the automated searches “prior to transmission” of a message (so-called client-side scanning, Article 10a). The initially proposed scanning of text messages for indications of grooming, which is hardly being used to date, is to be scrapped, as is the scanning of voice communication, which has never been done before. Probably as a concession to France, the chats of employees of security authorities and the military are also to be exempted from chat control. ---- Strange times we live in. Entertaining, but strange. [1] - https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/majority-for-chat-control-possible-users-who-refuse-scanning-to-be-prevented-from-sharing-photos-and-links/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/majority-for-chat-control-p...

heroprotagonist 2y ago
Seriously, who are they expecting to pay for that? AI vision detection run against _every image every person sends to anyone_, among other things, will get ridiculously expensive. Half of the reason Microsoft is pushing "AI PCs" with special hardware is so they can push their spying to on-device and reduce all the extra costs the data processing they're imagining for things like automatic-screenshot-analysis-every-x-seconds will need. And they're pretty much experts on spying on users. They've been collecting so much data for so long that apparently they've found a way to utilize what they collect in a way that makes the costs balance out in the end. Whether thats with government access, preferential antitrust treatment, or some actual financial method that directly affects the bottom line, I don't know. Somehow it's worthwhile for them. BUT -- when even Microsoft is looking for more efficient ways to spy on people, and forcing new hardware to support that effort, you know the data collection and analysis technique is definitely not ready to be made a legal mandate. It doesn't make sense at all for some EU decision makers to decide it's acceptable for their citizens to bear the cost of so much data processing. ....wait, how much do large players in AI contribute to these politicians campaigns? Or if not them, who is really pushing this? It seems like someone should really try following the money on this one.
- threefiddy 2y ago
  vry good take
- pjerem 2y ago
  You answered yourself : remember Apple’s implementation of CSAM detection. We don’t own our devices anymore and we now have very limited control of what is executed or not so there is nothing stopping developers to run those legal spywares on the device since our only option if we don’t like what an app does is to not use it.
  - qludes 2y ago
    A trusted app running on arm execution level 3 could make use of the NPU to offload some of the work?
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Apple's proposed algorithm was probably the best so far. The problem is not going away, we in tech are partly responsible and we should promote good ways to deal with it. If we don't then a solution will be found anyway, it'll just be a bad one.
  - hellojesus 2y ago
    I don't know how to help folks that didn't treat the apple csam fiasco as a massive wake up call to ditch the ecosystem. We have linux phones these days, caly, and grapheneos. There really isn't reason to give up on general computing. (Ignoring the propriety baseband blobs.)
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      Apple's backing down on that very sound initiative was a failure and a red flag indeed. They had the chance and the weight to pull it off and set a standard, but instead basically gave in for regulators to implement whatever spying laws they want. Sadly, nothing else comes even close to Apple in terms of security and privacy, especially for someone who is not an infosec specialist and doesn't have time to read CVEs all day.
zer00eyz 2y ago
I hope this passes. I want to see the riots when EU cell phone consumers have to pay for text messages again. Some men just want to watch the world burn...
- beardyw 2y ago
  Does anyone have to pay for text messages?
  - isodev 2y ago
    People often forget just how much we get from the EU that's taken for granted. Everything from practicalities like no roaming costs and consumer protection, all the way to freedom of movement, peace and overall stability.
    - mytailorisrich 2y ago
      I don't think the EU says anything about how much texts should cost... Edit: I am *obviously* not talking about surcharges for roaming but cost in plans, which I think is the point of the OP when he asks who pays for texts. Pricing is not regulated and has nothing to do with the EU.
      - isodev 2y ago
        It does, quite a lot. For example, it says you should pay the same regardless where you are in the EU (roaming), it also says you get a clear and transparent pricing for your mobile service, it also says all kinds of things about your rights to cancel, change providers, get refunds etc... you should look it up.
        mytailorisrich 2y ago
        Why the snark? Especially since you're beside the point, so let me rephrase with the help of my lawyer: the EU does not say anything about how much consumers should be charged for text messages by their operator (i.e. "cost"). This was clear from my previous comment...
huygens6363 2y ago
What do they do if I send: AFBC67CEDA7AD? Ban all “non-intelligible” content? Who can stop me from hiding information in very normal looking sentences? If you want privacy, there will always be a way.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  This is not about preventing you from doing that, it is about preventing services with many users from providing that service to you without a backdoor. You can just send anyone you want an encrypted e-mail or message, but Signal can't facilitate that without the required provisions set out in those laws. If these dumb laws get enacted, Signal cannot get away with just pretending you are sending gibberish whilst providing true end-to-end encryption without any client-side scanning or whatever to you, but you are well within your rights do so yourself on top of Signal (if that's even possible); they just can't provide an automated means to do that for you.
  - eterps 2y ago
    > they just can't provide an automated means to do that for you What I'm wondering is whether two separate applications can be set up to communicate automatically, with one handling messaging and the other being responsible for encrypting and decrypting the data. What would be against the law in that case? The messaging app? The encryption app? Or the interaction you are doing in that moment?
    - mfiro 2y ago
      > The encryption app? That might be the next step. Banning encryption. We live in a strange world right now.
      - Freak_NL 2y ago
        The EU does not want to ban encryption, because it is the backbone of e-commerce and banking. There are plenty of public references that show the EU's explicit support of strong encryption. What some law-and-order types (globally) want, is the means to scan, peek, or otherwise access private communication, especially if that communication is provided by a service used by millions. You can encrypt all you like, but if you use WhatsApp or Signal, laws like these force those services to create a way to eavesdrop. How is probably not defined in the law. Client-side scanning before encryption, having those services act as men-in-the-middle for each conversation; this is all fine, and can use encryption as usual. As long as certain agencies get to have a peek somewhere between those strongly encrypted tunnels.
riedel 2y ago
Will my email client using SMIME have to implement this? Seems kind of ridiculous. Seems to be targeting platforms. Will it be illegal to send encrypted texts, what is keeping anyone from using crypto on top of existing messaging? While I do not want to dive into any details on adverse effects of such stupidities, the EU seems to be actually taking a strange road to tech dependent overengineered regulation. It seems that this mostly driven by lobbyists that want to sell compliance services. Also it seems that there is more value in creating regulation rather than making sure it is enforcible.
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
  > Will my email client using SMIME have to implement this? Seems kind of ridiculous. Seems about right for the EU.
- xorcist 2y ago
  If you are in the business of selling SMIME clients as a service to other people, then yes, you would need to implement this if the law passes. Maybe there's an unintended upside to all this regressive business legislation. With all the focus on the "platforms", then maybe, just maybe, this will be yet another nail among the thousands of nails needed to finally kill them off.
  - riedel 2y ago
    Signal is not selling anything. So my guess is that distribution is enough. So my guess this would also apply to e.g. Thunderbird then.
yard2010 2y ago
Yes. There are people with problems. Instead of helping them fix their problems it's just easier to prevent nice things from everybody. Strange times indeed.
- benfortuna 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    You're right. But apparently every time this topic comes up we cry that this is abuse of our freedom. Tech is not good or bad but it does have unintended consequences and open new ways for abuse. This is tough to swallow for us who work in tech but is obvious to everyone else. If we stay in denial and do not volunteer to help use tech smartly to compensate for bad side effects, they will vote in some dumb law and some bad guys will exploit it for surveillance later.
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      Government recording all our conversations also has have "unintended" consequences. The track record of such societies is rather terrifying.
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        You think I disagree? My point is almost exactly the same, we should stop that (by promoting a saner solution).
        yencabulator 2y ago
        So, what's an example saner solution? Or is this one of those "just" sentences?
        throwaway290 2y ago
thefz 2y ago
I will quit using all these platforms then. Finally, free from WhatsApp voice notes, stickers and images clogging my phone storage. Adieu.
- Longhanks 2y ago
  If those are what's bothering you, nothing stops you from quitting right now.
  - thefz 2y ago
    For now I have a Tasker job routinely deleting WhatsApp's media directories. Unfortunately everyone is using it so I have to stick with it. Hate WhatsApp with passion. If this law passes, bye bye.
    - redeeman 2y ago
      "want to stick with it".. dont misrepresent
      - immibis 2y ago
        "have to stick with it".. dont misrepresent
        redeeman 2y ago
        you admitted yourself you dont have to, as you will leave it if the law passes. Why are you not willing to admit that it is a "WANT" ?
    - drexlspivey 2y ago
      Everyone will be using it when the law passes so it’s no different.
    - stavros 2y ago
      Do you imagine that people will stop chatting if this law passes? If you hate it so much, why not just stop using it now?
lynx23 2y ago
Frankly, GB was totally right in leaving, and if I had the ability to vote for stay/leave right now, I'd want to go. But this position is totally unwanted. You're being called Nazi or at least extreme-right the minute you utter it. This way of dealing with supposed democracy is what makes me want to leave even more. The EU has become a strange beast. The current election ads make that pretty clear. It basically reduces to "vote us, we're cool, we are deocracy" which is almost dystopianly void of real content.
- lambdaxyzw 2y ago
  Where are you living, if you don't mind sharing? I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. And I disagree. You take for granted all the good regulating and all the things enabled by the EU, and focus on the one bad regulation we're discussing, which is not even a law yet. I, personally, am not looking forward to the future without EU (I remember my country before it joined and the progress is immense).
  - Longhanks 2y ago
    > Where are you living, if you don't mind sharing? I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. Try the largest German-speaking subreddit, for example.
  - effie 2y ago
    > I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. I think elsewhere online this may happen. Also, some public broadcasters use the "far right" word group suspiciously often, almost as if it was some kind of effort to softly suggest to people how not to vote, but I must be imagining things, because they would never do that:)
    - lynx23 2y ago
      Yeah, thats the problem. "they would never do that" has been violated far too often by supposedly centered media outlets. During corona, our state contrtrolled media actually really said that citizens are not supposed to listen to any other media because everyone else is likely lying. And since it is blatantly obvious that center-left parties will get a haircut for what they did during corona, again, the state controlled media are now doing exactly what you describe, warning the citizens of the evil right parties. And I am forced to pay for this, 50 cent a day. This isn't democracy anymore, its blatant manipulation of public opinion.
astrobe_ 2y ago
Article 12 of the declaration of Human Rights : No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Bugging communications by investigators with special approval is already an exception to this principle. Government bodies that make sure that laws conform to the constitution should veto any exception broader than that, so this draft should basically be pointless. It feels like there are social/political mechanisms at work that allow that to however happen. They pave the road to Hell little by little, one stone at a time, and this is neither strange nor entertaining. To me, the beginning of this century has similarities with the beginning of the previous, which is quite worrying.
- billywhizz 2y ago
  agreed. i feel the real motivation is much more sinister and much more to do with the geopolitical situation than anything else. the reality is, if anyone is seriously determined to commit what they know are crimes then there are many solutions, of admittedly varying quality, for having private communications outside of the mainstream apps available on the app store. even signal itself has an apk you can install on android from their website. so, it's unlikely this will indeed help in the fight against CSAM or whatever else is purportedly motivating this legislation. the end result will be mass surveillance 24/7 on the vast majority of the population who aren't commiting any crimes at all. it seems to me like big brother's wet dream. ironic that this is exactly the thing the US/EU political leadership have been bashing the chinese for since forever.
  - OhioMan2943 2y ago
    governments having low level dirt on their populations feels like manufacturing excuses to send people to war and remove their autonomy
  - exe34 2y ago
    > ironic that this is exactly the thing the US/EU political leadership have been bashing the chinese for since forever. there's a good reason for that. it's not controlled by and for the benefit of our oligarchs.
kara4151 2y ago
[flagged]
jamesponddotco 2y ago
The law says "images, photos, videos and links". What about simple encrypted or password protected zip files? As far as I know, most messaging platforms allow you to send regular files too. Wouldn't "the bad guys" simply use that as a loophole and continue with their day? I know the real reason behind the law isn't to actually protect children, but, you know...
- hellojesus 2y ago
  I assume this will apply to all bits. After all, a zip could contain an image, so it should be scanned. And someone might accidently change the file extension from .jpg to .py.
  - rstuart4133 2y ago
    The point he's making is if they enact this law, it will be trivial for anyone that cares (eg, people who do distribute CP) to bypass if it is implemented as described. They don't even have to stop using Signal or whatever. They just need to plonk whatever they want hidden in a password protected .zip (or something else if that's not strong enough, or use stenography if they ban containers) and send it using Signal as normal. So it won't stop CP, or any other criminal activity that's in the slightest bit cluefull. They must know this, so I'm left scratching my head wondering what they are actually up to.
    - cchance 2y ago
      Yep, lol nothing to stop criminals from encrypting the file themselves and sending it across lol theirs hundreds of unhacked encryptions, all the end users need to do is share the passwords outside the spied upon platforms, like this doesn't solve any issues it just strips freedoms from the non-criminals. Shit criminals will just meet and swap usb drives lol, like i don't get how this solves the crime issue. This is like banning monero or crypto because its used illegally.. meanwhile CP and other crimes have used Euro and USD paper money for long before crypto lol but yet "crypto seems shady" is enough reason to point at it as the reason crime exists lol.
    - 2y ago
ein0p 2y ago
When apps created for overthrowing governments in other countries begin to backfire amid record low approval ratings, it all of a sudden turns out that “human rights” are merely a cudgel to beat others with.
zzo38computer 2y ago
The problem is the design of the system and the programs. It should not handle by the apps/services but you can use your own programs for encryption, for display, etc, and can be used separately. If the data is really end-to-end encrypted then the service and apps should not care what they are; the user should care based on what programs they install to handle them. Additionally, it says photos, videos, links, but you can make any data represented as other files e.g. text, slowscan, steganography, etc.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"The initially proposed scanning of text messages ... is to be scrapped, as is the scanning of voice communication, which has never been done before." If true, then it seems unnecessary to "leave the EU market" with respect to text messages and voice calls.
cchance 2y ago
Holy shit thats creepy AF
xinayder 2y ago
It would be so funny if a security authority was caught in a CSAM case, and it wasn't detected simply because said person is an authority and shall not be scanned for unlawful content.

heroprotagonist 2y ago

Seriously, who are they expecting to pay for that? AI vision detection run against _every image every person sends to anyone_, among other things, will get ridiculously expensive. Half of the reason Microsoft is pushing "AI PCs" with special hardware is so they can push their spying to on-device and reduce all the extra costs the data processing they're imagining for things like automatic-screenshot-analysis-every-x-seconds will need. And they're pretty much experts on spying on users. They've been collecting so much data for so long that apparently they've found a way to utilize what they collect in a way that makes the costs balance out in the end. Whether thats with government access, preferential antitrust treatment, or some actual financial method that directly affects the bottom line, I don't know. Somehow it's worthwhile for them. BUT -- when even Microsoft is looking for more efficient ways to spy on people, and forcing new hardware to support that effort, you know the data collection and analysis technique is definitely not ready to be made a legal mandate. It doesn't make sense at all for some EU decision makers to decide it's acceptable for their citizens to bear the cost of so much data processing. ....wait, how much do large players in AI contribute to these politicians campaigns? Or if not them, who is really pushing this? It seems like someone should really try following the money on this one.

threefiddy 2y ago
vry good take
pjerem 2y ago
You answered yourself : remember Apple’s implementation of CSAM detection. We don’t own our devices anymore and we now have very limited control of what is executed or not so there is nothing stopping developers to run those legal spywares on the device since our only option if we don’t like what an app does is to not use it.
- qludes 2y ago
  A trusted app running on arm execution level 3 could make use of the NPU to offload some of the work?
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Apple's proposed algorithm was probably the best so far. The problem is not going away, we in tech are partly responsible and we should promote good ways to deal with it. If we don't then a solution will be found anyway, it'll just be a bad one.
- hellojesus 2y ago
  I don't know how to help folks that didn't treat the apple csam fiasco as a massive wake up call to ditch the ecosystem. We have linux phones these days, caly, and grapheneos. There really isn't reason to give up on general computing. (Ignoring the propriety baseband blobs.)
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Apple's backing down on that very sound initiative was a failure and a red flag indeed. They had the chance and the weight to pull it off and set a standard, but instead basically gave in for regulators to implement whatever spying laws they want. Sadly, nothing else comes even close to Apple in terms of security and privacy, especially for someone who is not an infosec specialist and doesn't have time to read CVEs all day.

zer00eyz 2y ago

I hope this passes. I want to see the riots when EU cell phone consumers have to pay for text messages again. Some men just want to watch the world burn...

beardyw 2y ago
Does anyone have to pay for text messages?
- isodev 2y ago
  People often forget just how much we get from the EU that's taken for granted. Everything from practicalities like no roaming costs and consumer protection, all the way to freedom of movement, peace and overall stability.
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    I don't think the EU says anything about how much texts should cost... Edit: I am *obviously* not talking about surcharges for roaming but cost in plans, which I think is the point of the OP when he asks who pays for texts. Pricing is not regulated and has nothing to do with the EU.
    - isodev 2y ago
      It does, quite a lot. For example, it says you should pay the same regardless where you are in the EU (roaming), it also says you get a clear and transparent pricing for your mobile service, it also says all kinds of things about your rights to cancel, change providers, get refunds etc... you should look it up.
      - mytailorisrich 2y ago
        Why the snark? Especially since you're beside the point, so let me rephrase with the help of my lawyer: the EU does not say anything about how much consumers should be charged for text messages by their operator (i.e. "cost"). This was clear from my previous comment...

huygens6363 2y ago

What do they do if I send: AFBC67CEDA7AD? Ban all “non-intelligible” content? Who can stop me from hiding information in very normal looking sentences? If you want privacy, there will always be a way.

Freak_NL 2y ago
This is not about preventing you from doing that, it is about preventing services with many users from providing that service to you without a backdoor. You can just send anyone you want an encrypted e-mail or message, but Signal can't facilitate that without the required provisions set out in those laws. If these dumb laws get enacted, Signal cannot get away with just pretending you are sending gibberish whilst providing true end-to-end encryption without any client-side scanning or whatever to you, but you are well within your rights do so yourself on top of Signal (if that's even possible); they just can't provide an automated means to do that for you.
- eterps 2y ago
  > they just can't provide an automated means to do that for you What I'm wondering is whether two separate applications can be set up to communicate automatically, with one handling messaging and the other being responsible for encrypting and decrypting the data. What would be against the law in that case? The messaging app? The encryption app? Or the interaction you are doing in that moment?
  - mfiro 2y ago
    > The encryption app? That might be the next step. Banning encryption. We live in a strange world right now.
    - Freak_NL 2y ago
      The EU does not want to ban encryption, because it is the backbone of e-commerce and banking. There are plenty of public references that show the EU's explicit support of strong encryption. What some law-and-order types (globally) want, is the means to scan, peek, or otherwise access private communication, especially if that communication is provided by a service used by millions. You can encrypt all you like, but if you use WhatsApp or Signal, laws like these force those services to create a way to eavesdrop. How is probably not defined in the law. Client-side scanning before encryption, having those services act as men-in-the-middle for each conversation; this is all fine, and can use encryption as usual. As long as certain agencies get to have a peek somewhere between those strongly encrypted tunnels.

riedel 2y ago

Will my email client using SMIME have to implement this? Seems kind of ridiculous. Seems to be targeting platforms. Will it be illegal to send encrypted texts, what is keeping anyone from using crypto on top of existing messaging? While I do not want to dive into any details on adverse effects of such stupidities, the EU seems to be actually taking a strange road to tech dependent overengineered regulation. It seems that this mostly driven by lobbyists that want to sell compliance services. Also it seems that there is more value in creating regulation rather than making sure it is enforcible.

DEADMINCE 2y ago
> Will my email client using SMIME have to implement this? Seems kind of ridiculous. Seems about right for the EU.
xorcist 2y ago
If you are in the business of selling SMIME clients as a service to other people, then yes, you would need to implement this if the law passes. Maybe there's an unintended upside to all this regressive business legislation. With all the focus on the "platforms", then maybe, just maybe, this will be yet another nail among the thousands of nails needed to finally kill them off.
- riedel 2y ago
  Signal is not selling anything. So my guess is that distribution is enough. So my guess this would also apply to e.g. Thunderbird then.

yard2010 2y ago

Yes. There are people with problems. Instead of helping them fix their problems it's just easier to prevent nice things from everybody. Strange times indeed.

benfortuna 2y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway290 2y ago
  You're right. But apparently every time this topic comes up we cry that this is abuse of our freedom. Tech is not good or bad but it does have unintended consequences and open new ways for abuse. This is tough to swallow for us who work in tech but is obvious to everyone else. If we stay in denial and do not volunteer to help use tech smartly to compensate for bad side effects, they will vote in some dumb law and some bad guys will exploit it for surveillance later.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    Government recording all our conversations also has have "unintended" consequences. The track record of such societies is rather terrifying.
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      You think I disagree? My point is almost exactly the same, we should stop that (by promoting a saner solution).
      - yencabulator 2y ago
        So, what's an example saner solution? Or is this one of those "just" sentences?
        throwaway290 2y ago

thefz 2y ago

I will quit using all these platforms then. Finally, free from WhatsApp voice notes, stickers and images clogging my phone storage. Adieu.

Longhanks 2y ago
If those are what's bothering you, nothing stops you from quitting right now.
- thefz 2y ago
  For now I have a Tasker job routinely deleting WhatsApp's media directories. Unfortunately everyone is using it so I have to stick with it. Hate WhatsApp with passion. If this law passes, bye bye.
  - redeeman 2y ago
    "want to stick with it".. dont misrepresent
    - immibis 2y ago
      "have to stick with it".. dont misrepresent
      - redeeman 2y ago
        you admitted yourself you dont have to, as you will leave it if the law passes. Why are you not willing to admit that it is a "WANT" ?
  - drexlspivey 2y ago
    Everyone will be using it when the law passes so it’s no different.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Do you imagine that people will stop chatting if this law passes? If you hate it so much, why not just stop using it now?

lynx23 2y ago

Frankly, GB was totally right in leaving, and if I had the ability to vote for stay/leave right now, I'd want to go. But this position is totally unwanted. You're being called Nazi or at least extreme-right the minute you utter it. This way of dealing with supposed democracy is what makes me want to leave even more. The EU has become a strange beast. The current election ads make that pretty clear. It basically reduces to "vote us, we're cool, we are deocracy" which is almost dystopianly void of real content.

lambdaxyzw 2y ago
Where are you living, if you don't mind sharing? I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. And I disagree. You take for granted all the good regulating and all the things enabled by the EU, and focus on the one bad regulation we're discussing, which is not even a law yet. I, personally, am not looking forward to the future without EU (I remember my country before it joined and the progress is immense).
- Longhanks 2y ago
  > Where are you living, if you don't mind sharing? I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. Try the largest German-speaking subreddit, for example.
- effie 2y ago
  > I don't know about any place where expressing eurosceptic views would get you called "far right", let alone a Nazi. I think elsewhere online this may happen. Also, some public broadcasters use the "far right" word group suspiciously often, almost as if it was some kind of effort to softly suggest to people how not to vote, but I must be imagining things, because they would never do that:)
  - lynx23 2y ago
    Yeah, thats the problem. "they would never do that" has been violated far too often by supposedly centered media outlets. During corona, our state contrtrolled media actually really said that citizens are not supposed to listen to any other media because everyone else is likely lying. And since it is blatantly obvious that center-left parties will get a haircut for what they did during corona, again, the state controlled media are now doing exactly what you describe, warning the citizens of the evil right parties. And I am forced to pay for this, 50 cent a day. This isn't democracy anymore, its blatant manipulation of public opinion.

astrobe_ 2y ago

Article 12 of the declaration of Human Rights : No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Bugging communications by investigators with special approval is already an exception to this principle. Government bodies that make sure that laws conform to the constitution should veto any exception broader than that, so this draft should basically be pointless. It feels like there are social/political mechanisms at work that allow that to however happen. They pave the road to Hell little by little, one stone at a time, and this is neither strange nor entertaining. To me, the beginning of this century has similarities with the beginning of the previous, which is quite worrying.

billywhizz 2y ago
agreed. i feel the real motivation is much more sinister and much more to do with the geopolitical situation than anything else. the reality is, if anyone is seriously determined to commit what they know are crimes then there are many solutions, of admittedly varying quality, for having private communications outside of the mainstream apps available on the app store. even signal itself has an apk you can install on android from their website. so, it's unlikely this will indeed help in the fight against CSAM or whatever else is purportedly motivating this legislation. the end result will be mass surveillance 24/7 on the vast majority of the population who aren't commiting any crimes at all. it seems to me like big brother's wet dream. ironic that this is exactly the thing the US/EU political leadership have been bashing the chinese for since forever.
- OhioMan2943 2y ago
  governments having low level dirt on their populations feels like manufacturing excuses to send people to war and remove their autonomy
- exe34 2y ago
  > ironic that this is exactly the thing the US/EU political leadership have been bashing the chinese for since forever. there's a good reason for that. it's not controlled by and for the benefit of our oligarchs.

kara4151 2y ago

[flagged]

jamesponddotco 2y ago

The law says "images, photos, videos and links". What about simple encrypted or password protected zip files? As far as I know, most messaging platforms allow you to send regular files too. Wouldn't "the bad guys" simply use that as a loophole and continue with their day? I know the real reason behind the law isn't to actually protect children, but, you know...

hellojesus 2y ago
I assume this will apply to all bits. After all, a zip could contain an image, so it should be scanned. And someone might accidently change the file extension from .jpg to .py.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  The point he's making is if they enact this law, it will be trivial for anyone that cares (eg, people who do distribute CP) to bypass if it is implemented as described. They don't even have to stop using Signal or whatever. They just need to plonk whatever they want hidden in a password protected .zip (or something else if that's not strong enough, or use stenography if they ban containers) and send it using Signal as normal. So it won't stop CP, or any other criminal activity that's in the slightest bit cluefull. They must know this, so I'm left scratching my head wondering what they are actually up to.
  - cchance 2y ago
    Yep, lol nothing to stop criminals from encrypting the file themselves and sending it across lol theirs hundreds of unhacked encryptions, all the end users need to do is share the passwords outside the spied upon platforms, like this doesn't solve any issues it just strips freedoms from the non-criminals. Shit criminals will just meet and swap usb drives lol, like i don't get how this solves the crime issue. This is like banning monero or crypto because its used illegally.. meanwhile CP and other crimes have used Euro and USD paper money for long before crypto lol but yet "crypto seems shady" is enough reason to point at it as the reason crime exists lol.
  - 2y ago

ein0p 2y ago

When apps created for overthrowing governments in other countries begin to backfire amid record low approval ratings, it all of a sudden turns out that “human rights” are merely a cudgel to beat others with.

zzo38computer 2y ago

The problem is the design of the system and the programs. It should not handle by the apps/services but you can use your own programs for encryption, for display, etc, and can be used separately. If the data is really end-to-end encrypted then the service and apps should not care what they are; the user should care based on what programs they install to handle them. Additionally, it says photos, videos, links, but you can make any data represented as other files e.g. text, slowscan, steganography, etc.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"The initially proposed scanning of text messages ... is to be scrapped, as is the scanning of voice communication, which has never been done before." If true, then it seems unnecessary to "leave the EU market" with respect to text messages and voice calls.

cchance 2y ago

Holy shit thats creepy AF

xinayder 2y ago

It would be so funny if a security authority was caught in a CSAM case, and it wasn't detected simply because said person is an authority and shall not be scanned for unlawful content.