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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 at

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.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  Any intelligent criminal will just meet face-to-face to discuss their criminal activities. None of these apps protect against someone taking a photo of the screen and snitching to the authorities about what was said in exchange for less jail time.
  - LtdJorge 2y ago
    Or, to be honest, implement a fully E2EE chat application by themselves, right?
    - billywhizz 2y ago
      it's pretty easy to do these days. even in the browser you can use WebRTC for P2P and Web Crypto on top and knock together an e2e encrypted messenger in a few hours. assuming you can trust the browser crypto of course.
    - draebek 2y ago
      I haven't confirmed this, but I would expect that creating E2EE chat that doesn't follow this new law would itself be prosecutable? Now criminals can be picked up for merely using secure chat, if the government can't easily get them for human trafficking/drug trafficking/whatever. Reminds me of how the twentieth century US gangster Al Capone was prosecuted for tax evasion.
      - rrrix1 2y ago
        Anyone who is not explicitly privy to a fully bespoke, end to end encrypted data transmission and retrieval system has no way to determine the function or purpose of that system. It could be text, audio, video, raw signal bitstream from an IoT sensor, or a full duplex async combination of anyone of those. It wouldn't be a "chat service" to an outside observer, it would just be seemingly random, opaque bits between two endpoints.
        DEADMINCE 2y ago
        If the traffic can't be identified and it isn't a known endpoint, then that's already suspicious.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > agreed. i feel the real motivation is much more sinister and much more to do with the geopolitical situation than anything else. Of course. Your "privacy" is very important for Microsoft, Google and Apple because of the "geopolitical situation". /s
faeriechangling 2y ago
Yeah I truly don't see how this is all that ambiguous of a violation of privacy.
figassis 2y ago
Here I entirely blame Apple for opening this Pandora’s box. Politicians never attempt what they don’t know to be possible.

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.
jjmarr 2y ago
Any intelligent criminal will just meet face-to-face to discuss their criminal activities. None of these apps protect against someone taking a photo of the screen and snitching to the authorities about what was said in exchange for less jail time.
- LtdJorge 2y ago
  Or, to be honest, implement a fully E2EE chat application by themselves, right?
  - billywhizz 2y ago
    it's pretty easy to do these days. even in the browser you can use WebRTC for P2P and Web Crypto on top and knock together an e2e encrypted messenger in a few hours. assuming you can trust the browser crypto of course.
  - draebek 2y ago
    I haven't confirmed this, but I would expect that creating E2EE chat that doesn't follow this new law would itself be prosecutable? Now criminals can be picked up for merely using secure chat, if the government can't easily get them for human trafficking/drug trafficking/whatever. Reminds me of how the twentieth century US gangster Al Capone was prosecuted for tax evasion.
    - rrrix1 2y ago
      Anyone who is not explicitly privy to a fully bespoke, end to end encrypted data transmission and retrieval system has no way to determine the function or purpose of that system. It could be text, audio, video, raw signal bitstream from an IoT sensor, or a full duplex async combination of anyone of those. It wouldn't be a "chat service" to an outside observer, it would just be seemingly random, opaque bits between two endpoints.
      - DEADMINCE 2y ago
        If the traffic can't be identified and it isn't a known endpoint, then that's already suspicious.
hulitu 2y ago
> agreed. i feel the real motivation is much more sinister and much more to do with the geopolitical situation than anything else. Of course. Your "privacy" is very important for Microsoft, Google and Apple because of the "geopolitical situation". /s

faeriechangling 2y ago

Yeah I truly don't see how this is all that ambiguous of a violation of privacy.

figassis 2y ago

Here I entirely blame Apple for opening this Pandora’s box. Politicians never attempt what they don’t know to be possible.