5 ms·

Are there ways to circumvent this? Selfhosting? Encryption before sending?

abc123abc123 2y ago
Not for the masses. They cannot be bothered and most likely don't care until it is too late. For the technologist, it is easy to circumvent in the private sphere of life at least. I foresee however, a digital ID that will be tied to all your essential services, that you will be required to have in order to live, and that's the tracking and communication point that will be used to get a hold of you. Kind of like the chinese social credit score, but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.
- tomalbrc 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - WitCanStain 2y ago
    Tinfoil? That is where we are headed. To handwave away concerns about where the current trajectory is going is very dismissive.
  - largelady97 2y ago
    [flagged]
- ben_w 2y ago
  > but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services. I won't say that future will never happen only because "never" is a long time, but that's not happening in the foreseeable future. I'm in Germany right now, and theoretically my ID card can be used online. In practice, "Digitalisierung" is kinda a joke here, much like "paperless office". For example, I have to visit an office to activate that feature of my ID card, and another to tell them I've moved. During the pandemic, they briefly realised they didn't need to do that, then they forgot. Likewise with health, there's more than one health insurance provider just in Germany, let alone the whole EU, and if I move country (not just travel, move) my previous insurance isn't likely to work in the new place anyway — it would take substantial improvements before it would even be possible for someone to corrut it the way you're afraid of.
  - Sander_Marechal 2y ago
    Germany is a lot less digital than the rest of Europe though. Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip). It's so strange visiting Germany as a tourist and not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example.
    - Semaphor 2y ago
      > Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip) I’d call that a minority, especially since Covid. > not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes. I don’t carry cash with me and pay almost everything with my MC debit or AMEX credit card, even in cases I can’t do that, I’d be able to pay with girocard (non-MC/Visa debit card, a widespread local system) if I had one.
      - gambiting 2y ago
        >>An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes. Personal anecdote, but I've been travelling through Germany this winter and outside of motorway petrol stations and big supermarkets pretty much no one would accept my Visa/MasterCard cards - "EC Karten" only everywhere. We went to a big restaurant which I assumed would be ok because I could see the card terminal at the till, and at the end they told me it's EC Karten only - had to drive around at 11pm to find a working ATM just to withdraw some euro to pay them, while my wife and son waited at the restaurant - absolute nonsense.
        Semaphor 2y ago
        Weird, I wonder if that’s the south? Up here in Lübeck, even the small stores now almost always accept everything thanks to the small SumUp terminals.
        2y ago
hans_castorp 2y ago
Drive your tractor to Brussels and set some barricades on fire. Violent protests seem to be the way to change the EU commission's mind :(
- hyperman1 2y ago
  You'll have to wait in line with every other protest going on, then. Some group is protesting something every day in Brussels. They're all insane and whining over the smallest things, except the ones aligned to my personal political vieuws, of course.
- go_elmo 2y ago
  Worked for deprioritizing biodiversity efforts for the sake of mass produced animal products, because, more processing steps => higher economic yield. Money talks.
zaik 2y ago
I self-host a standard XMPP server for my family. Let's see how long it takes before this is illegal too.
- rvnx 2y ago
  At the end, it could be a OS-based scanning, so no matter if the message is encrypted in transit, or self-hosted, then if the message is displayed it could be transmitted and scanned. Nobody wants terrorists, right ?
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    That will never fly in every Linux distribution (if any at all), so there’s never going to be a way to stop this for even reasonably proficient criminals.
    - type0 2y ago
      NSA already considers and flags Linux users as "extremists", so it was only a question of time before agencies in EU would do the same
      - rvnx 2y ago
        From a compliance perspective, TPM/signed bootloaders might be a "solution" against illegal Linux distributions.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  You actually get them to use it? That's the problem with most of these ideas: sure, you can just roll your own encryption, chat program, etc., but getting the people in your life to use it is another matter. My mom has enough trouble using the popular and ubiquitous chat app we communicate through; something custom is going to be beyond her.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
tdsone3 2y ago
Self-hosted E2E encryption via Matrix might be one way: https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/end-to-end-encryption/ https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/end-to-end-encryptio...
teekert 2y ago
There is this in the table: "All services normally provided for remuneration (including ad-funded services) are in scope, without no threshold in size, number of users etc." "Only non-commercial services that are not ad-funded, such as many open source software, are out of scope" Weird right? But it would be weirder if they would outlaw the application of mathematical operations on your own messages... oh wait that's what they are proposing... Try and stop me. Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife?
- quectophoton 2y ago
  > Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife? Them: "If you don't show us your messages, you are probably going to jail. So if you don't change your mind, and end up in jail without having shown us your messages, that means whatever was in those messages was way worse than going to jail. You probably knew you were going to get a longer sentence if you showed us those messages, and preferred to go with a shorter sentence of 'refusing to collaborate'."
  - mythhabit 2y ago
    "I forgot the password, sorry". I really do not hope they will start putting people in jail for being forgetful.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Oh dear don't give them ideas. I know like one password by heart if someone tries to force me to write it down.
    - teekert 2y ago
      Yeah, it's my Bitwarden password for me... So the $5 wrench will be very effective.
constantcrying 2y ago
>Selfhosting? I presumed self hosting a chat service becomes illegal with these laws?
Zak 2y ago
Many, and most of them are easy enough that anyone seriously concerned with privacy or secrecy will use them. They do take effort though, which means that while journalists, lawyers, corporations, governments, privacy nerds, and criminals will use them, the average person will not. What we would lose is that secure communication is actually mainstream now. Billions of people, many of whom don't even know what "end to end encrypted" means use messaging services with strong encryption including WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, even Facebook chat in some cases. These services make mass surveillance difficult or impossible, and targeted surveillance of their users requires significant effort, such as installing malware on a target's device.

Not for the masses. They cannot be bothered and most likely don't care until it is too late. For the technologist, it is easy to circumvent in the private sphere of life at least. I foresee however, a digital ID that will be tied to all your essential services, that you will be required to have in order to live, and that's the tracking and communication point that will be used to get a hold of you. Kind of like the chinese social credit score, but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services.

tomalbrc 2y ago
[flagged]
- WitCanStain 2y ago
  Tinfoil? That is where we are headed. To handwave away concerns about where the current trajectory is going is very dismissive.
- largelady97 2y ago
  [flagged]
ben_w 2y ago
> but in the EU of tomorrow, your digital EU idea will be the choking point. Do something out of line, and it can be revoked and with it, your bank, credit cards, health care, travel and other services. I won't say that future will never happen only because "never" is a long time, but that's not happening in the foreseeable future. I'm in Germany right now, and theoretically my ID card can be used online. In practice, "Digitalisierung" is kinda a joke here, much like "paperless office". For example, I have to visit an office to activate that feature of my ID card, and another to tell them I've moved. During the pandemic, they briefly realised they didn't need to do that, then they forgot. Likewise with health, there's more than one health insurance provider just in Germany, let alone the whole EU, and if I move country (not just travel, move) my previous insurance isn't likely to work in the new place anyway — it would take substantial improvements before it would even be possible for someone to corrut it the way you're afraid of.
- Sander_Marechal 2y ago
  Germany is a lot less digital than the rest of Europe though. Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip). It's so strange visiting Germany as a tourist and not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example.
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    > Germans by-and-large even refuse to use debit cards (pin&chip) I’d call that a minority, especially since Covid. > not being able to pay with my card in a restaurant for example An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes. I don’t carry cash with me and pay almost everything with my MC debit or AMEX credit card, even in cases I can’t do that, I’d be able to pay with girocard (non-MC/Visa debit card, a widespread local system) if I had one.
    - gambiting 2y ago
      >>An even smaller minority, especially for restaurants, slightly larger for non-chain fast food places that probably also cheat on taxes. Personal anecdote, but I've been travelling through Germany this winter and outside of motorway petrol stations and big supermarkets pretty much no one would accept my Visa/MasterCard cards - "EC Karten" only everywhere. We went to a big restaurant which I assumed would be ok because I could see the card terminal at the till, and at the end they told me it's EC Karten only - had to drive around at 11pm to find a working ATM just to withdraw some euro to pay them, while my wife and son waited at the restaurant - absolute nonsense.
      - Semaphor 2y ago
        Weird, I wonder if that’s the south? Up here in Lübeck, even the small stores now almost always accept everything thanks to the small SumUp terminals.
        2y ago

hans_castorp 2y ago

Drive your tractor to Brussels and set some barricades on fire. Violent protests seem to be the way to change the EU commission's mind :(

hyperman1 2y ago
You'll have to wait in line with every other protest going on, then. Some group is protesting something every day in Brussels. They're all insane and whining over the smallest things, except the ones aligned to my personal political vieuws, of course.
go_elmo 2y ago
Worked for deprioritizing biodiversity efforts for the sake of mass produced animal products, because, more processing steps => higher economic yield. Money talks.

zaik 2y ago

I self-host a standard XMPP server for my family. Let's see how long it takes before this is illegal too.

rvnx 2y ago
At the end, it could be a OS-based scanning, so no matter if the message is encrypted in transit, or self-hosted, then if the message is displayed it could be transmitted and scanned. Nobody wants terrorists, right ?
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  That will never fly in every Linux distribution (if any at all), so there’s never going to be a way to stop this for even reasonably proficient criminals.
  - type0 2y ago
    NSA already considers and flags Linux users as "extremists", so it was only a question of time before agencies in EU would do the same
    - rvnx 2y ago
      From a compliance perspective, TPM/signed bootloaders might be a "solution" against illegal Linux distributions.
shiroiushi 2y ago
You actually get them to use it? That's the problem with most of these ideas: sure, you can just roll your own encryption, chat program, etc., but getting the people in your life to use it is another matter. My mom has enough trouble using the popular and ubiquitous chat app we communicate through; something custom is going to be beyond her.
- amarcheschi 2y ago

tdsone3 2y ago

Self-hosted E2E encryption via Matrix might be one way: https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/end-to-end-encryption/ https://matrix.org/docs/matrix-concepts/end-to-end-encryptio...

teekert 2y ago

There is this in the table: "All services normally provided for remuneration (including ad-funded services) are in scope, without no threshold in size, number of users etc." "Only non-commercial services that are not ad-funded, such as many open source software, are out of scope" Weird right? But it would be weirder if they would outlaw the application of mathematical operations on your own messages... oh wait that's what they are proposing... Try and stop me. Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife?

quectophoton 2y ago
> Are they going to put me in jail because I don't want them to read messages between me and my friends or my wife? Them: "If you don't show us your messages, you are probably going to jail. So if you don't change your mind, and end up in jail without having shown us your messages, that means whatever was in those messages was way worse than going to jail. You probably knew you were going to get a longer sentence if you showed us those messages, and preferred to go with a shorter sentence of 'refusing to collaborate'."
- mythhabit 2y ago
  "I forgot the password, sorry". I really do not hope they will start putting people in jail for being forgetful.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Oh dear don't give them ideas. I know like one password by heart if someone tries to force me to write it down.
  - teekert 2y ago
    Yeah, it's my Bitwarden password for me... So the $5 wrench will be very effective.

constantcrying 2y ago

>Selfhosting? I presumed self hosting a chat service becomes illegal with these laws?

Zak 2y ago

Many, and most of them are easy enough that anyone seriously concerned with privacy or secrecy will use them. They do take effort though, which means that while journalists, lawyers, corporations, governments, privacy nerds, and criminals will use them, the average person will not. What we would lose is that secure communication is actually mainstream now. Billions of people, many of whom don't even know what "end to end encrypted" means use messaging services with strong encryption including WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, even Facebook chat in some cases. These services make mass surveillance difficult or impossible, and targeted surveillance of their users requires significant effort, such as installing malware on a target's device.