5 ms·

It seems like a lot of these proposals are coming out of Europe—assuming I’m not mistaken (and I may well be), why is Europe cracking down so much on privacy?

diggan 2y ago
There is a huge section of the population who believes it's possible to strip the security of criminals using apps like Signal without it affecting everyone's security. Same in Sweden as the rest of the world. The military of Sweden seems to get it at least, they "write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties"". The military also recently advocated for more use of Signal, so clearly they've reviewed it and find the current security good enough.
bramhaag 2y ago
On the surface it's mostly "think of the children" and "terrorists use encryption" type arguments. I'm sure some of the politicians advocating for this have ulterior motives, but I hope we won't get in a position where we find out what those motives are.
- hoseja 2y ago
  The reasons mostly are "they are all owned by elites whose names you're not allowed to even know and who would like to keep the serfs docile and ignorant".
- WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 2y ago
  In Russia Internet censorship went in ten years from "we need a legal framework to block websites with child porn on a court order, why are you against it, are you a pedophile" to blocking everything that doesn't speak complimentary of the government without leaving any paper trail at all.
paganel 2y ago
Because we’re cuckolds and a politically dead society. Also very old. After you’re passed the age of 40 you’re more interested from your pension is going to get paid for when the day will come, not in abstract things like “freedom” and what have you.
- jisnsm 2y ago
  Things would improve dramatically if everybody who lives off the state (including pensioners) couldn’t vote. In some European countries public money has turned into a pretty transparent way of buying votes. These votes are used to make sure nothing ever changes.
- bloqs 2y ago
  This made me immediately picture all of my 40 plus friends and colleagues and... Its completely accurate. Aging slippers-and-tea Brits in comfortable office jobs with very little mortgage stress and a lot of time to virtue signal on facebook are some of the most useless, autopilot zombies the human race has ever seen
fredsted 2y ago
European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate, as we've seen with the their previous attempts to regulate the industry. It's very much a "vibes-based" approach. They can simply keep proposing the same regulation with a new name until it's voted through.
- diggan 2y ago
  > European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate I'd agree with you if you just put "bureaucrats" instead of European bureaucrats, what country isn't currently led by a bunch of bureaucrats who don't seem to understand even the basics of the technology they legislate about? I've yet to seen a country to lead the way, no wonder the rest of the countries don't seem to know what to do and just throwing stuff at the wall.
  - throwaway894345 2y ago
    While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits who will lobby against this kind of legislative overreach and sue if the legislation passes. Obviously we have all sorts of other problems, but mostly our bureaucrats and legislators aren’t making backdoors a policy as far as ai’m aware (who knows what the CIA and FBI and NSA are up to, though?). I assume it’s just one of those things that Swedish society is having to grapple with abruptly and that they will adapt the appropriate institutions. I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.
    - diggan 2y ago
      > While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits So does Sweden, and have had strong privacy advocates for a long time. Remember that The Pirate Bay came from Sweden? It spawned a political and ideological movement (Piratbyrån & Copyleft/Kopimi) that still has some presence in Sweden and EU although doesn't seem as strong as it used to be, except for Iceland I think. > I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately. Not sure what your own country is, but assuming it's US, they're pretty much equal in many ways (but not all obviously) and Sweden basically copy-pastes US political policy for the last decades, for better or worse.
samlinnfer 2y ago
[flagged]
- throwaway894345 2y ago
  Could you substantiate this comment in any way whatsoever? I don't need more pithy adverts for authoritarian politicians in my life.
  - samlinnfer 2y ago
    Vance's speech at the MSC criticizes Europe cracking on freedom of speech for its citizens.
kypro 2y ago
It's not just privacy, Europe is cracking down on freedoms generally. Free speech, the right to silence, the presumption of innocence, etc. Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent. Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base. As women become more politically active and as older generations make up a larger share of total voters if we assume these demographics are more safety orientated on average then perhaps we should assume that safety concerns will begin to trump the desire for freedom. It's just a theory though.
- bondarchuk 2y ago
  Glaring example supporting the first hypothesis is that Denmark reinstated blasphemy laws in 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Denmark
- account42 2y ago
  > Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent. Or you could undo the changes that have caused that decline in social cohesion. People don't share the same values because our governments have been non-stop importing people with radically different values. Values which see it as a positive to end the lives of those who don't agree. > Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base. That voter base does vote more for the established parties and their policies that have gotten us into this compared to the population at large, yes.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
tokai 2y ago
Sweden is having an epidemic of Crime as a Service, where minors are recruited online to do killings etc for cash. Secure messaging makes it very hard to find the leaders of these crimes.
- mantas 2y ago
  Bullshit. Crime gangs had myriad of ways to hire youth before. There could be other ways to make sure there’s no huge pool of youth waiting to be hired. But that may be politically too hard.
  - tokai 2y ago
    Please do your research before throwing that term after me. I don't care if you think its markedly different for crime recruiting earlier. Point is contracts for killings are put online and planned through Signal. The Swedish police find it annoying as it makes it hard to find the money men. That's the reason for why Sweden want the back door. If it makes sense or not has no bearing on what I wrote.
    - mantas 2y ago
      I’m throwing that term at Swedish police, not at you. Gangs would find another communication channel before the law is put into effect. Yet backdoor would be there forever.
mantas 2y ago
Because European tradition is to have strong bureaucracies steering the „democratic“ processes. And encryption is a wrench hitting those mechanisms. Another one is the raise of all sorts of independent journalists/bloggers/etc. Those themes keep recurring both on EU as well as national levels. Including nations that ain't EU members. As a citizen of EU member, I’d love to change this discourse. But there seems to be very few options to vote for. And then such BS happens at levels that are practically out of reach of democratical process.
veeti 2y ago
Sweden has rapidly devolved from a high trust society to one where firearms and grenade attacks are a weekly occurence [1]. It is the perfect opportunity for law enforcement to demand more surveillance capabilities. [1] https://la.stnight.in/Sweden/ https://la.stnight.in/Sweden/
- Gareth321 2y ago
  Step 1: allow a million people from low trust societies to immigrate to a nation of 10 million in a short span of time. Step 2: Sweden becomes the gun crime capital of Europe. Step 3: Change your society to a low trust society, dismantling all the wonderful things social services and liberal institutions.
nickslaughter02 2y ago
It's becoming clear that EU politicians are far too easy to manipulate by companies with products to sell. > Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171861
im3w1l 2y ago
I can not speak for Europe generally but Sweden has very serious problems with gang wars the last couple years, and people are really tired of them shooting each other and setting off explosives. That's the reason for this particular proposal (and many other questionable expansions of police power too).
account42 2y ago
The population in europe is finally (if slowly) waking up to the fact that their elected leaders do not act in their interest. This is the establishment's attempt of staying in control of the narrative so they can keep suppressing any real resistance to their rule.
friggle 2y ago
Bear with me here, but I think it comes down to believing in a "benign government", coupled with a misunderstanding of the technology. Under a benign government (as arguably we have in most of Europe), we can have a reasonable assumption that the state will act in the interests of the population. The public sector workers who have chosen that line of work probably believe in what they're doing and want to do it well. The government has always had the ability to steam letters open, and they will always need to, in order to fulfill their duties to the population. Of course, requests such as adding a back door to end-to-end encryption are unnecessary when they could take control of one of the devices in some fashion...
Gud 2y ago
As opposed to the US, where this spying is done illegally and no one gives a shit?

diggan 2y ago

There is a huge section of the population who believes it's possible to strip the security of criminals using apps like Signal without it affecting everyone's security. Same in Sweden as the rest of the world. The military of Sweden seems to get it at least, they "write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties"". The military also recently advocated for more use of Signal, so clearly they've reviewed it and find the current security good enough.

bramhaag 2y ago

On the surface it's mostly "think of the children" and "terrorists use encryption" type arguments. I'm sure some of the politicians advocating for this have ulterior motives, but I hope we won't get in a position where we find out what those motives are.

hoseja 2y ago
The reasons mostly are "they are all owned by elites whose names you're not allowed to even know and who would like to keep the serfs docile and ignorant".
WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 2y ago
In Russia Internet censorship went in ten years from "we need a legal framework to block websites with child porn on a court order, why are you against it, are you a pedophile" to blocking everything that doesn't speak complimentary of the government without leaving any paper trail at all.

paganel 2y ago

Because we’re cuckolds and a politically dead society. Also very old. After you’re passed the age of 40 you’re more interested from your pension is going to get paid for when the day will come, not in abstract things like “freedom” and what have you.

jisnsm 2y ago
Things would improve dramatically if everybody who lives off the state (including pensioners) couldn’t vote. In some European countries public money has turned into a pretty transparent way of buying votes. These votes are used to make sure nothing ever changes.
bloqs 2y ago
This made me immediately picture all of my 40 plus friends and colleagues and... Its completely accurate. Aging slippers-and-tea Brits in comfortable office jobs with very little mortgage stress and a lot of time to virtue signal on facebook are some of the most useless, autopilot zombies the human race has ever seen

fredsted 2y ago

European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate, as we've seen with the their previous attempts to regulate the industry. It's very much a "vibes-based" approach. They can simply keep proposing the same regulation with a new name until it's voted through.

diggan 2y ago
> European bureaucrats generally have little understanding of the technology they get paid to regulate I'd agree with you if you just put "bureaucrats" instead of European bureaucrats, what country isn't currently led by a bunch of bureaucrats who don't seem to understand even the basics of the technology they legislate about? I've yet to seen a country to lead the way, no wonder the rest of the countries don't seem to know what to do and just throwing stuff at the wall.
- throwaway894345 2y ago
  While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits who will lobby against this kind of legislative overreach and sue if the legislation passes. Obviously we have all sorts of other problems, but mostly our bureaucrats and legislators aren’t making backdoors a policy as far as ai’m aware (who knows what the CIA and FBI and NSA are up to, though?). I assume it’s just one of those things that Swedish society is having to grapple with abruptly and that they will adapt the appropriate institutions. I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately.
  - diggan 2y ago
    > While I generally agree, the bureaucrats in the US have been somewhat checked by nonprofits So does Sweden, and have had strong privacy advocates for a long time. Remember that The Pirate Bay came from Sweden? It spawned a political and ideological movement (Piratbyrån & Copyleft/Kopimi) that still has some presence in Sweden and EU although doesn't seem as strong as it used to be, except for Iceland I think. > I have more faith in Sweden than my own country lately. Not sure what your own country is, but assuming it's US, they're pretty much equal in many ways (but not all obviously) and Sweden basically copy-pastes US political policy for the last decades, for better or worse.

samlinnfer 2y ago

[flagged]

throwaway894345 2y ago
Could you substantiate this comment in any way whatsoever? I don't need more pithy adverts for authoritarian politicians in my life.
- samlinnfer 2y ago
  Vance's speech at the MSC criticizes Europe cracking on freedom of speech for its citizens.

kypro 2y ago

It's not just privacy, Europe is cracking down on freedoms generally. Free speech, the right to silence, the presumption of innocence, etc. Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent. Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base. As women become more politically active and as older generations make up a larger share of total voters if we assume these demographics are more safety orientated on average then perhaps we should assume that safety concerns will begin to trump the desire for freedom. It's just a theory though.

bondarchuk 2y ago
Glaring example supporting the first hypothesis is that Denmark reinstated blasphemy laws in 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Denmark
account42 2y ago
> Most of this is being done to address the increasing terrorism threat we now face on a daily basis. Freedoms really only work in societies where people broadly share the same values and cooperate, but European societies are fragmenting and increasingly becoming less safe and less tolerant. If we want to do something about this then restricting freedoms is probably going to be required to some extent. Or you could undo the changes that have caused that decline in social cohesion. People don't share the same values because our governments have been non-stop importing people with radically different values. Values which see it as a positive to end the lives of those who don't agree. > Another theory I have is that this could just be a symptom of an older and more female voter base. That voter base does vote more for the established parties and their policies that have gotten us into this compared to the population at large, yes.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

tokai 2y ago

Sweden is having an epidemic of Crime as a Service, where minors are recruited online to do killings etc for cash. Secure messaging makes it very hard to find the leaders of these crimes.

mantas 2y ago
Bullshit. Crime gangs had myriad of ways to hire youth before. There could be other ways to make sure there’s no huge pool of youth waiting to be hired. But that may be politically too hard.
- tokai 2y ago
  Please do your research before throwing that term after me. I don't care if you think its markedly different for crime recruiting earlier. Point is contracts for killings are put online and planned through Signal. The Swedish police find it annoying as it makes it hard to find the money men. That's the reason for why Sweden want the back door. If it makes sense or not has no bearing on what I wrote.
  - mantas 2y ago
    I’m throwing that term at Swedish police, not at you. Gangs would find another communication channel before the law is put into effect. Yet backdoor would be there forever.

mantas 2y ago

Because European tradition is to have strong bureaucracies steering the „democratic“ processes. And encryption is a wrench hitting those mechanisms. Another one is the raise of all sorts of independent journalists/bloggers/etc. Those themes keep recurring both on EU as well as national levels. Including nations that ain't EU members. As a citizen of EU member, I’d love to change this discourse. But there seems to be very few options to vote for. And then such BS happens at levels that are practically out of reach of democratical process.

veeti 2y ago

Sweden has rapidly devolved from a high trust society to one where firearms and grenade attacks are a weekly occurence [1]. It is the perfect opportunity for law enforcement to demand more surveillance capabilities. [1] https://la.stnight.in/Sweden/ https://la.stnight.in/Sweden/

Gareth321 2y ago
Step 1: allow a million people from low trust societies to immigrate to a nation of 10 million in a short span of time. Step 2: Sweden becomes the gun crime capital of Europe. Step 3: Change your society to a low trust society, dismantling all the wonderful things social services and liberal institutions.

nickslaughter02 2y ago

It's becoming clear that EU politicians are far too easy to manipulate by companies with products to sell. > Since the revelation of ‘Chatcontrol-Gate,’ we know that the EU’s chat control proposal is ultimately a product of lobbying by an international surveillance-industrial complex. To ensure this never happens again, the surveillance lobbying swamp must be drained.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171861

im3w1l 2y ago

I can not speak for Europe generally but Sweden has very serious problems with gang wars the last couple years, and people are really tired of them shooting each other and setting off explosives. That's the reason for this particular proposal (and many other questionable expansions of police power too).

account42 2y ago

The population in europe is finally (if slowly) waking up to the fact that their elected leaders do not act in their interest. This is the establishment's attempt of staying in control of the narrative so they can keep suppressing any real resistance to their rule.

friggle 2y ago

Bear with me here, but I think it comes down to believing in a "benign government", coupled with a misunderstanding of the technology. Under a benign government (as arguably we have in most of Europe), we can have a reasonable assumption that the state will act in the interests of the population. The public sector workers who have chosen that line of work probably believe in what they're doing and want to do it well. The government has always had the ability to steam letters open, and they will always need to, in order to fulfill their duties to the population. Of course, requests such as adding a back door to end-to-end encryption are unnecessary when they could take control of one of the devices in some fashion...

Gud 2y ago

As opposed to the US, where this spying is done illegally and no one gives a shit?