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EU ChatControl is back on the agenda
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoAnd it will never disappear from the agenda. Chat control is widely popular among some influential parts of the population. After the attempted terrorist attack in Vienna for the Taylor Swift concert the topic didn’t leave Austrian media. A lot of parents are in favor of this independently of terrorism because of fear of CSAM. There is an awful lot of lobbying going on and given history of EU regulation this can only end up passing in the worst possible way at one point.
- zaik 2y agoPopular among the population or popular among ÖVP politicians?
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoPopular across specific but impact parts of the population (parents).
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoAre there Austrian surveys backing this?
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoI doubt you would see it on surveys. However there is a lot of very noticeable lobbying about this. Our school has a parent group that organizes events to inform parents about the dangers of social media and online grooming. You will find leaflets, PDFs etc. If you are interacting with those circles you will find folks who made it their life’s mission to protect children and who are lobbying for this. You donut need a large number of people to sway legislation, you only need determined people.
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoOk, I'm Austrian and don't know of anyone who would support this. But I'm not a parent. I think this is a classic example where a referendum makes sense.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoA referendum might be beneficial because it has the chance to make a lasting decision. What is happening here is that the people that care keep fighting for it.
- elric 2y agoI imagine this is popular in the same way Brexit was: only when the question is worded in a way that ignores all the possible negative outcomes. Something about having a cake and eating it...
- caseyy 2y agoOn the other hand, there are EU countries like Lithuania, which have a very privacy-conscious culture, and have not had any meaningful terror attacks for nearly all their history. The last notable one was 30 years ago[0]. No one died. In Lithuania, privacy is quite meaningfully enshrined in its constitution[1]. I remember that Google StreetView faced significant regulatory challenges in simply photographing people’s homes, and today, many buildings are blurred out. This is only one example. But you can see that everyone takes privacy very seriously in the country. A lot of social engineering-type phishing for personal data does not work because people understand which boundaries cannot be crossed intuitively. More privacy does not mean more terrorism. There may be situations where reducing privacy does reduce terrorism, but privacy is not the cause. I wish governments would rather address the cause. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_incidents_in_Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorist_incidents_i... [1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/lithuania-privacy-taken-very-seriously-more-can-be-done-protect-vulnerable https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/lithuania-pr...
- baybal2 2y ago[dead]
- johngladtj 2y agoLithuania? Just pitch it as a way to fight back against Russia, and it will pass in a jiffy just like all the other anti-russian laws they've been rolling through
- caseyy 2y agoI know you are somewhat joking. But there is an undertone of truth in what you say. Oppressive state surveillance in the USSR (commonly verging on persecution of undesirable groups) was a strong reason for countries breaking away from it between 1990 and 1991, when the union collapsed. Lithuania was arguably the first one. The privacy protections we see today are a reaction to some extent, but Lithuanians enjoy them. It was not an over-reaction. It would be wise to use the examples of heavy-handed state surveillance in history in arguments for privacy laws. The US did this to argue for their economic model quite effectively. Whether that ultimately is good — I mean that some people have become so afraid of communism that they can’t agree on some fundamental social welfare systems and duty of care for each other as people — I don’t know. But contrasting liberal capitalism with planned-economy communism was effective in galvanising people towards the former. “Enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that.
- chii 2y ago> terrorist ... CSAM it's always the terrorists and the children. It turns off the logical, rational thought centers in the brain, and convinces ordinarily rational people to accept these poorly thoughtout security measures. As a civid duty, you must fight against measures like these that erode security and privacy. It sucks, because the reward is "nothing", and you must forever maintain vigilence against constant reproposals.
- raverbashing 2y agoA lot of people prefer to violate the rights of their own electorate as opposed to putting people into planes and having effective overseas action against the financiers of it
- samatman 2y agoLet's not forget drug dealers and money launderers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- zelphirkalt 2y agoEven if that argument somehow statistically works/worked, sometimes it should be mentioned: I would rather have some 3 terror attacks more per year, than having privacy of millions invaded and our way of living destroyed, just to prevent those 3 cases. It would be letting the actual terrorists determin how we live, what rights and privacy we are allowed to have.
- vorticalbox 2y agoTerrorists would just either add e2e over existing apps or just move to ones that support it. Criminals tend to not care about the law even making e2e illegal would do very little to stop anything.
- tzs 2y ago> I would rather have some 3 terror attacks more per year, than having privacy of millions invaded and our way of living destroyed, just to prevent those 3 cases. End to end encrypted chat for the general public has only been available for ~15 years. On the web, SSL is ~30 years old. PGP is ~35 years old. As far as I can tell people's way of living now is largely the same as it was back before any of those were around, so I don't see how it would destroy our way of living if much of that went away.
- ajsnigrutin 2y ago> A lot of parents are in favor of this independently of terrorism because of fear of CSAM. A transparent CSAM checking process would be funny.. Imagine a 18, 19 yo., relatively skinny girl with small breasts (or a guy with a small dick) sending such a picture to her long-term boyfriend (...), and then getting messages from the system: - "hello, our AI thinks your boobs are underage, we sent the photo to police station in Cityville for a manual checkup" - "hello, the photo has been transferred to inspection team of Bobby Robertson, Johnny Walkerson and Jane Jameson to inspect" - "hello, by a careful inspection of your boobs, with a 2-to-1 vote, the team has decided that your boobs are most probably old enough to be photographed and sent around. The photo was sent to your desired destination and just in case, arhchived in the police arhives for possible further inspections".
- janice1999 2y agoThat is already happening, including the AI and manual renew. One victim was a father sending a photo of his child to his doctor. "Google’s Scans of Private Photos Led to False Accusations of Child Abuse" (2022) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-photos-led-false-accusations-child-abuse https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-...
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoCSAM scanning is in effect on multiple messenger services for two years or so. Also in the US.
- tmpccc 2y agoI am in favor of ChatControl for politicians only: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/two-agencies-slam-von-der-leyen-over-transparency-failures/ https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/two-agencies-... "The Ombudsman accused von der Leyen and the Commission of ‘maladministration’ for failing to produce the deleted text messages, challenging the belief that such texts did not qualify as ‘documents’ under EU law."
- tebbers 2y agoSame problem in the UK. Boris Johnson claimed he lost his phone and then it got wiped. Rishi Sunak similarly.
- moffkalast 2y agoThe dog ate it! I lost it in a tragic boating accident!
- xinayder 2y agoAnd yet, they included a clause in the law that government should be excluded from this state surveillance.
- dekken_ 2y agoIt's almost as if they suspect everyone else is similarly, a criminal.
- rurban 2y agoThat would be even worse. The government only really wants to observe the messages of their political opponents, nobody else. Then they the can blackmail them as they want. As the American do in their corrupt surveillance state.
- tankenmate 2y agoSo much cynicism that doesn't actually reflect the reality; maybe it reflects the reality in a pseudo democracy.
- aussieguy1234 2y agoThis could be abused in any number of ways and would probably make people and their precious children less safe in the long run rather than more safe. You can be sure Viktor Orban would use it to crack down on political opposition in Hungary, for example. In the wrong hands, could be used to have these precious children or their parents killed or worse. Authoritarian governments often do things, or threaten to do things, including sexual violence to children as a way to put pressure on and extract information from their parents. This type of surveillance tech would make it easier for them.
- sharpshadow 2y agoOrban doesn’t need to crack down on political opposition he has a strong majority in his country.[1] I guess you have a wrong opinion about Hungary and Orban because the media doesn’t like him because he is a pain in the ass for many plans of the European Union and gets bad reporting. Hungary has by the way not even 10 million residents. 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-vote-orbans-12-year-rule-tight-ballot-overshadowed-by-ukraine-war-2022-04-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-vote-orbans-...
- dijit 2y agoYeah, Putin also enjoys a really high approval rating. Quite easy when you control the state media and suppress opposition... which is what the EU is trying to fine Hungary for doing, but Poland kept blocking it. Source: https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-media-freedom-act-examining-public-and-private-control-of-media-organs-in-hungary-and-italy/ https://europeanlawblog.eu/2024/07/01/evading-the-european-m...
- exomancer 2y agoFWIW the pervious Polish government modeled its state capture after Hungary quite openly. They quite miraculously lost the elections after a major mobilization (historic attendance of over 74%), and have now been stripped of funding due to illegally using state funds during their campaign in 2023. This was possible in Poland because, unlike Hungary, Poland still had free (non-state) mainstream media, and not for the lack of trying.
- consumerx 2y agohttps://meshtastic.org https://meshtastic.org lol
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agowhy lol? are you actively participating?
- consumerx 2y agolol, because there is new comms tech on the horizon and what they will end up with is, controlling old tech in the best case..
- numberless 2y agoMeshtastic is very much insecure (except for the encrypted direct messages they added recently) by lacking Perfect Forward Secrecy, has a limit of 38 devices on a network due to its use of flood routing and can only operate over LoRa. I would very much recommend using https://reticulum.network/ https://reticulum.network/ instead due to its Perfect Forward Secrecy, it's current implementation supports billions of devices (could go up to galactic scale if necessary with a one line change) and can operate over any communication system which provides "at least half-duplex operation, and provide an average throughput of 5 bits per second or greater, and supports a physical layer MTU of 500 bytes" (rabbit hole warning)
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoOkay, so all Western societies are bound to go surveillance state in near future, unchecked by judicial forces and social credit systems to top it off. It will happen and we can only postpone it. What is the response to that of the technologically competent segment of society? Will this give birth to a rogue cyberpunk culture of hackers and cowboys? Or are we facing an era resembling a black mirror episode with smiles and flowers on the bright side and secret prisons beneath?
- diggan 2y ago> and social credit systems to top it off. It will happen and we can only postpone it. What social credit systems are you talking about specifically? Maybe I live under a rock, but I haven't heard anything about something like that in EU or Europe.
- exitb 2y agoSocial credit systems always struck me as not that different from just money. Especially with high inflation.
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoAn example for a social credit system would be the German Schufa score.
- consumerx 2y agoexactly or deducing points when caught speeding ....
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agodepends on how you define it. in my book a SCS requires that what impacts the score is disconnected from what is impacted by it. the Punkte are just impacting your driver's license. the Schufa score can lower your chances to get an apartment just because you had problems with a cellphone provider.
- mmoll 2y agoSurpriiiiiiise!
- dt3ft 2y ago[flagged]
- amarcheschi 2y agoThe chat you are referring to aren't encrypted, I don't see how breaking end to end encryption would affect the chat you're talking about. That's a problem that has to do with telegram governance. In telegram, group chats are not encrypted. 1:1 chats are also not encrypted if you don't start a secret chat before Now tell me, if law enforcement can just get into those group since they're not encrypted, why are not they doing that? What do they need to break encryption for?
- dt3ft 2y agoThe ordering process is likely handled in e2e 1:1 chat. The public and unencrypted channel is only used as advertising/entry point. The evidence of purchase is as such not accessible to the authorities.
- the-smug-one 2y agoE2E 1:1 chat is not going to disappear for the criminals simply because it becomes illegal for the common man.
- amarcheschi 2y agoI'm not sure whether you need evidence of purchase when you're actively marketing you sell drugs
- tigeroil 2y agoThis is not a good argument as to why we should break encryption. Rather, it's an argument that law enforcement should start engaging with those groups on telegram directly, i.e. setting up stings etc and just actually go and catch them. Do some good old police work. If you're able to find them on telegram, clearly law enforcement are capable too, if they're resourced and willing. Encryption isn't the problem here.
- 2y ago
- Shalle135 2y agoHow would a law stop criminals from using encrypted applications without sharing private keys with gov? Shootings, pedophiles, drugs, terror etc should definetly be higher on the scale than hosting an illegal application. In addition to this, how do they expect to implement this for non-EU companies? The DNS blockades that are already going on today are less than efficient.
- Zak 2y agoI don't believe the previous proposals contain penalties for end users, just operators of noncompliant services. There were also some exceptions that mean educated and determined users would still have access to secure options. I think the policy goal is to make secure chat non-mainstream. It's easy to imagine reasons governments might want that, and most of them aren't aligned with the principles of liberal democracy.
- Havoc 2y agoOf course it is. Park it till the outrage dies down then try again is standard MO for passing shady acts. And if this round fails they'll be back in 3 months.
- moffkalast 2y agoUrsula von der Lyin' is truly the Mitch McConnell of the EU.
- consp 2y agoSure, but will it this time include all politicians, state officials and others who are "special". If no, then GTFO. It's a good litmus test to check the actual goal instead of the terrorism/save the children/drugs excuses.
- outime 2y agoFor me, they can GTFO in any case. Some EU law won't make "special" people comply with it or be punished for not doing so.
- raverbashing 2y agoMHO: Patrick is too trigger happy in his updates and HN is all too happy to crap-stir as much as possible That being said, he can probably get a copy of the document if he asks the right people. > Originator: Presidency Also let it be known that everybody is pissed at Hungary at the moment (I mean, ok, this is kinda constant, but even more now) Same caveats apply here: this has to go through Parliament, a lot of people is against it, then this is against EU fundamental law, etc (but yeah this BS does get annoying)
- gizmo 2y ago[flagged]
- raverbashing 2y ago> Who in their right mind shuts down their nuclear power plants and exchanges energy independence for cheap gas imports from Russia? What do you mean by "nobody"? The tree-huggers were all for more polluting forms of energy lest it made the USSR look like a state that didn't give 2 worries about safety
- mrtksn 2y agoI wonder if this is a copypasta? Something in these lines pops up every time someone in an EU institution proposes something controversial. That someone is usually Ylva Johansson and its quickly striken down but for some reason there's this strange narrative pushed that feels almost automated. WTF is this stuff about EU shutting down nuclear reactors? Complete fantasy world. Are you copy pasting this from somewhere or were you made to believe in on Twitter or something? Please write a response I'm very curious about the roots of this comment.
- gizmo 2y agoRegarding Germany and their nuclear power situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#First_phase-out_proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#First... France is shutting down 14 plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France Belgium was also on track to close down all their nuclear plants by next year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Belgium Not fantasy world stuff at all. You can find a million sources for EU hostility to nuclear power, especially prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
- mrtksn 2y agoThat’s individual countries own decisions, nothing to do with EU. There’s no such thing as hostility towards Nuclear power, here is a recent news about the EU president pushing for nuclear power: https://www.yahoo.com/news/eu-needs-more-nuclear-european-125740214.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/eu-needs-more-nuclear-european-12... There are Some countries may be closing down reactors but other countries are building new ones. Just last year Finland commissioned a new nuclear reactor.
- dgrr19 2y agoThis is the reason a lot of europeans are choosing to leave Europe seeking refuge somewhere else more free :)
- speedgoose 2y agoSource?
- jonathanstrange 2y ago"a lot of" is totally subjective anyway, GP could use any source. Of course, some people leave the EU every year.
- aruggirello 2y agoWhere?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoGiven the politicians keep bringing back these same dangerous ideas, it is time for people who are aware of it to make everyone they know aware of the issue. And then organize towards mass protest. And after removing offending politicians from power, push for them to be jailed for violation of civil liberties. Push for local warrants for their arrest or bans that make their lives in Europe highly inconvenient. Tarnish their legacy as officials. Sure these efforts may not succeed but it’s important to make their lives so difficult as to deter others from ever doing this again. None of this is easy, and it’ll be met by the same suppression of protests that has happened in other instances across Europe in the last few years. But I think it’s the only way. There is no shortcut for political pressure.
- intunderflow 2y agoThey'll just keep forcing votes on it until it passes - the EU special
- starspangled 2y agoStrange that these European utopias seem to be on the edge of collapsing into civil conflicts if the plebs are permitted to communicate with one another without government supervision.
- pelorat 2y agoHitlers rise to power can be attributed to free speech, which is why saying some things, and promoting some things, will land you in prison in places like Germany.
- janice1999 2y agoThe fascists literally murdered journalists and burned down newspapers critical of them on their rise to power. I suggest checking out this podcast on "How The Liberal Media Helped Fascism Win". The issue was not too much free speech. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-how-the-liberal-media-207359043/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]
- Tainnor 2y agoThe debate about a surveillance state isn't the same debate as whether it should be allowed to deny the Holocaust. I know 0 Germans who are bothered by the latter.
- starspangled 2y agoEven if that were true, it can be attributed to lots of things. The ruling class's wars and economic mismanagement, common people feeling disenfranchised and abandoned by politcs, for some examples. In a real utopia it is those things that would be changed, not the peoples' ability to communicate without government eavesdropping on them.
- vasco 2y agoYou can just send encrypted text through a unencrypted channel, look, these are instructions for the next terrorist attack: vss8uATnfADT6Z/XN3yUcjq3R5e8P8HjIkm2GbS6e8CbOnQb5qx0112mmjgUezWbAMxSPegGo8TSMIj3rEEe9mG/JYzsDb9g2tm6zfeLEYA=
- seydor 2y agothe chat control is one thing we need in order to make a great leap forward towards a safer EU. It's probably one of the most consequential pieces of high-tech that the EU ever created. We should all be thankful that it exists and not let a minority of lawyers prevent the future. Our basic freedoms can only be guaranteed with an extensive surveillance system to (preemtively?) remove bad actors in these perilous times. Some EU countries are way ahead in this direction, and one could say they lead the way to the future. For example Greece has repeatedly used the Predator malware to spy on the communications of hundreds of people, including the leader of an opposition party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Greek_surveillance_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Greek_surveillance_scanda...). As a result, millions of tourists flocked into the country in the following years, and everybody says it is great.
- nforgerit 2y agoGerman government will print out all messages on paper and hire thousands of civil servants to read each message. It's gonna be a Beschäftigungswunder.
- megous 2y agoWell somewhere in Czech Republic, some public servants are receiving well formed digital XML messages, and transcribing values from them manually to an information system. Sometimes they make a mistake and swap some values, which is how we know. Information age is upon us.
- nforgerit 2y agoOur governments are a swamp of incompetence concerning anything "Information age". But still my fav story is from the private sector: In order to "merry" digital and paper form data, they set up a system to send paper forms to Swiss post ("digitization-as-a-service") who routed them to (afair) Bangladesh where cheap workers (used to a wholly different alphabet) manually transcribed stuff as XML and uploaded it to some ftp directory. We SWEs then were supposed to build automated systems based on that handwritten XML data. Obviously, the cost they reduced with cheap labor they had to pay multiple times to have us building a resilient data ingestion system. Why again are we okay with having lawyers and MBAs making decisions?
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoIt would help a lot if counter-terrorism and other organisations fighting this kind of threat would publish a quarterly or annual summary (idk which is plausible) of the threats they've averted, the perceived number of threats they think are lurking out there, the number of cases that have not yet been solved and need to be taken down, etc. etc.
- dns_snek 2y agoIt would help whom and to achieve what? How do we know they're not lying? And how do those numbers justify irreversible surveillance of everyone's most private thoughts? A terrorist organization isn't going to use Facebook Messenger to discuss their plans, they'll use a vetted application that doesn't have a backdoor.
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago[flagged]
- dns_snek 2y agoWhat you wrote sounds like an argument in favor of propaganda. If you're not prepared to defend it then don't comment at all.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoYou know the answer to your previous questions, then why ask it in the first place.
- compootr 2y agofound schrödinger's idiot
- heckelson 2y agoThe worst thing about this is that we the citizens have to fight this every time, but if this just passes one single time we may lose our rights on this issue forever.
- mikrotikker 2y agoSunset clauses would be great. Every X years they have to vote to re enable the law or it becomes deactivated. 1 year of deactivation gets it wiped.
- janice1999 2y agoIn reality these powers get renewed forever. See "Senate passes bill renewing key FISA surveillance power moments after it expires" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-renews-fisa-section-702-spying-privacy-rcna148394 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-renews-fisa...
- mikrotikker 2y agoBugger
- Tainnor 2y agoIf it comes to that, I just hope the EU courts will strike it down.
- tsujamin 2y agoBinding commitments or laws preventing the adoption of this sort of scheme could be lobbied for by citizens, but in reality I think your point holds
- fsflover 2y agoPerhaps we can support organization like EDRi to fight for us continuously.
- g9yuayon 2y ago
- FredPret 2y agoCreepy beyond belief. They will never stop pushing for this in public - what are they doing when we aren’t looking? State power has grown steadily for centuries now, even in the US where there are strict legal limits on it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoSo parts of dutch government are introducing rules where eg ministers aren't allowed to have phones on them anymore for important meetings. I'm a bit curious why Netherlands would then hold a neutral position in this case, further weakening phone security. https://nos.nl/artikel/2534226-schoof-over-telefoonverbod-in-ministerraad-ook-meest-hardnekkige-junks-akkoord https://nos.nl/artikel/2534226-schoof-over-telefoonverbod-in...
- Eumenes 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the US intelligence apparatus was pushing for this. There is a giant censorship industry in the US, despite the 1st amendment, mostly via NGOs/non-profits. Great way to circumvent the constitution.
- frank_bb 2y ago[dead]
- eggsboenk 2y agoIs there a peer-to-peer tool that allows communication and can circumvent chat controls?
- compootr 2y agogee, I wonder! I think there's one that's along the name of a mathematical table of values with a .org TLD...