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Again, again and again: These things should first be tested for 5 years on every politician and every civil servant, including their families, including their

Again, again and again: These things should first be tested for 5 years on every politician and every civil servant, including their families, including their children. Security researches should be given the freedom to hack that system as much as they can, in order to find security problems, no prosecution guaranteed. Every access to data should be logged on a public blockchain with pseudonymization of who accessed whose data. After those 5 years, reports and statistical analysis about the usefulness should be published: how many crimes were prevented, who went to jail for what, who had to go to court for what, with references to the logged data in the blockchain. Then the public gets to vote on if they want this or not.

cookiengineer 1y ago
The issue I have with this proposal is that politicians won't change their behavior. The optimum politician is an absolute pragmatist without any moral values. That is what you need to be to succeed in a federalistic democracy. Regarding Chat Control: Do we know who is lobbying for it so much? Maybe journalists should focus on finding dirt on the lobbying organizations, so that everyone knows about them.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  To be honest, the journalists already focused on finding dirt https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/ https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the... https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/ https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...
- input_sh 1y ago
  Oh we know who's behind it: a Hollywood celebrity-run charity that shadily hired multiple high-ranking Europol politicians. Their whole deal is to convince legislators that scanning every image on your device for CSAM is absolutely necessary (https://www.thorn.org/ https://www.thorn.org/) and then selling a tool to do that to companies (https://safer.io/ https://safer.io/). If it's legally required, what else are you gonna do but go to them for a "solution"?
conradfr 1y ago
Good idea, maybe this way we would have Ursula von der Leyen's sms with Pfizer!
Gud 1y ago
I don’t think this is a fair treatment of anyone. Total surveillance, which we are talking about here, is extremely damaging to the subject, eventually all their dirty secrets will be out, legal and illegal. I also argue that allowing the state to monitor its citizens fundamentally changes it closer a state I don’t want to exist. Nothing good can come out a surveillance state, no matter how small.
- qwertox 1y ago
  The point is that this way the public doesn't have to protest against it. The politicians and civil servants will do that for us, which is what we are paying them for anyway: to work for us. This way they'll think twice if they really want this to get started.
  - Gud 1y ago
    Yes, I understood the point. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
martin-t 1y ago
The problem is that _we don't want every crime to be caught or solved_. The worst thing that could happen to freedom is that the system would actually work as advertised. Because then resistance would be impossible. If a government is so powerful they can stop even just 99% of crimes, they are so powerful that people can't rise up against it. At that point it's only a matter of time until authoritarians get elected and get rid of elections. The probability is not 0 which means it'll happen eventually with a probability of 1. We need to be able to resist. Look at how many democracies were created by violent revolutions. How many bad people had to be killed before they stopped trying for a while. How many bad people had to be threatened with being killed before they gave up power "voluntarily". You think the Velvet revolution was peaceful? Imagine you're an asshole who oppressed 10M people for years until they got fed up and 1M of them are now in the square right in front of your eyes, angry and shouting. What do you think is gonna happen if the implied violence materializes? How many cops do you need to stop 1M people and how many of those cops are actually gonna turn their weapons against you too? The real power is always held by men with guns (and these days with drones). Or look at Syria. You think the cunt in charge fled out of goodwill to stop the bloodshed? No, he fled because he didn't wanna end up bleeding out on the pavement and then be hung up at a gas station as a temporary flag of freedom. We need to be able to resist and that includes being able to talk about violence, even promote it when the violence is just (not legally but morally). We need to be able to make people angry, to promote hate against injustice. And we need to be able to organize without the government knowing until it's too late for them. And yes, those abilities will be used by bad people too but that's the price we need to pay.

cookiengineer 1y ago

The issue I have with this proposal is that politicians won't change their behavior. The optimum politician is an absolute pragmatist without any moral values. That is what you need to be to succeed in a federalistic democracy. Regarding Chat Control: Do we know who is lobbying for it so much? Maybe journalists should focus on finding dirt on the lobbying organizations, so that everyone knows about them.

amarcheschi 1y ago
To be honest, the journalists already focused on finding dirt https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/ https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the... https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/ https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimite...
input_sh 1y ago
Oh we know who's behind it: a Hollywood celebrity-run charity that shadily hired multiple high-ranking Europol politicians. Their whole deal is to convince legislators that scanning every image on your device for CSAM is absolutely necessary (https://www.thorn.org/ https://www.thorn.org/) and then selling a tool to do that to companies (https://safer.io/ https://safer.io/). If it's legally required, what else are you gonna do but go to them for a "solution"?

conradfr 1y ago

Good idea, maybe this way we would have Ursula von der Leyen's sms with Pfizer!

Gud 1y ago

I don’t think this is a fair treatment of anyone. Total surveillance, which we are talking about here, is extremely damaging to the subject, eventually all their dirty secrets will be out, legal and illegal. I also argue that allowing the state to monitor its citizens fundamentally changes it closer a state I don’t want to exist. Nothing good can come out a surveillance state, no matter how small.

qwertox 1y ago
The point is that this way the public doesn't have to protest against it. The politicians and civil servants will do that for us, which is what we are paying them for anyway: to work for us. This way they'll think twice if they really want this to get started.
- Gud 1y ago
  Yes, I understood the point. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

martin-t 1y ago

The problem is that _we don't want every crime to be caught or solved_. The worst thing that could happen to freedom is that the system would actually work as advertised. Because then resistance would be impossible. If a government is so powerful they can stop even just 99% of crimes, they are so powerful that people can't rise up against it. At that point it's only a matter of time until authoritarians get elected and get rid of elections. The probability is not 0 which means it'll happen eventually with a probability of 1. We need to be able to resist. Look at how many democracies were created by violent revolutions. How many bad people had to be killed before they stopped trying for a while. How many bad people had to be threatened with being killed before they gave up power "voluntarily". You think the Velvet revolution was peaceful? Imagine you're an asshole who oppressed 10M people for years until they got fed up and 1M of them are now in the square right in front of your eyes, angry and shouting. What do you think is gonna happen if the implied violence materializes? How many cops do you need to stop 1M people and how many of those cops are actually gonna turn their weapons against you too? The real power is always held by men with guns (and these days with drones). Or look at Syria. You think the cunt in charge fled out of goodwill to stop the bloodshed? No, he fled because he didn't wanna end up bleeding out on the pavement and then be hung up at a gas station as a temporary flag of freedom. We need to be able to resist and that includes being able to talk about violence, even promote it when the violence is just (not legally but morally). We need to be able to make people angry, to promote hate against injustice. And we need to be able to organize without the government knowing until it's too late for them. And yes, those abilities will be used by bad people too but that's the price we need to pay.