5 ms·

Patrick Breyer has an article how American foundation Thorn is heavily lobbying Europol for this stuff. And there's some cross hiring going on according to him.

Patrick Breyer has an article how American foundation Thorn is heavily lobbying Europol for this stuff. And there's some cross hiring going on according to him. Clearly it's not even just "for the children" anymore. Just plain old panopticon surveillance. I guess they want their NSA too. Though they forget that NSA is only for terrorism purposes, their data is not too be used for regular policing. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-launches-investigation-into-europol/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-l...

philipwhiuk 1y ago
Terrorism is basically "whatever the government at the time doesn't like" anyway
- PaulRobinson 1y ago
  No, terrorism "is the use or threat of serious violence, damage to property, or disruption of [...] systems to advance a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause, with the aim of influencing a government or international organization, or of intimidating the public." "Whatever the government at the time doesn't like", is best described as "opposition". It's a healthy and critical component of a free and fair democracy. One that is increasingly silenced in the modern World, much to our shame when future generations judge us. While I understand the point behind old line "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", the key point is that both terrorism and "freedom fighting" are about resorting to the use of violence, and the democracy involved (if it was ever present), has failed when people resort to such violence. I say this as a man who unfortunately has suffered the fear, paranoia and threat of the Provisional IRA, ISIS-attributed cells, and the hard-right provoking riots in the cities and towns I've lived in from an early age. And that is the point of terrorism - it is meant to induce fear and paranoia and a sense of threat that makes us all want to do anything to make it go away, including surrendering our fundamental rights and rubber-stamping legislation that gives agencies the right to erase our privacy - and by extension our freedom - that raises the question of what's truly worse?
  - uncircle 1y ago
    > I say this as a man who unfortunately has suffered the fear, paranoia and threat of the Provisional IRA, ISIS-attributed cells, and the hard-right provoking riots in the cities and towns I've lived in from an early age. > that is the point of terrorism - it is meant to induce fear and paranoia and a sense of threat that makes us all want to do anything to make it go away, including surrendering our fundamental rights and rubber-stamping legislation that gives agencies the right to erase our privacy Are you describing bomb-wearing terrorists here, or the fables of child safety that's being used by people in power to erect a surveillance state before our very eyes?
    - PaulRobinson 1y ago
      The Provisional IRA destroyed the center of my home city (Manchester) with a bomb in the back of a lorry that weighed over 1,500kgs. While growing up in the years before that attack, I was regularly evacuated from shops and other buildings in the center so that controlled detonations could take place of smaller devices. ISIS-attributed cells conducted attacks with bombs in London and Manchester over many years, starting with the 7/7 attacks on tube lines and bus routes I happen to use sometimes. On the 22nd March 2017, my partner crossed Westminster Bridge on her way to the theater about 30-45 minutes before an ISIS-affiliated attacker used a car to mow down pedestrians (and because she'd made it to the theater and had her phone off, I wasn't able to contact her for the first hour or so). A month later (to the day), a suicide bomber detonated a device at a pop concert in my old home city, killing 22 people - many of them children. The bomber had made the bomb while living in an address about 40 feet from my old address when I lived in Manchester. A few weeks after that, another attack happened on London Bridge and Borough Market, on streets and in pubs where I had been socialising the week before. I was fortunate that I, and those I care about, were not hurt or killed in these incidents. But that was fortune, not skill - a slightly delay here, or a decision to "not go this week, let's go next week", and I would have been in the middle of it all. And these, I should point out, are not isolated incidents. The full list on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... - is quite a thing. It's quite likely that most people living in a major city (or even large town), in the UK today of a similar age to myself (late 40s), will have memories of nearby terrorist attacks in their lifetimes. Yes, there are fables of child safety at play, and since 2021 the mood has switched so perhaps there is a lesser sense of urgency, but we're now seeing the hard right starting to be responsible for more terrorist attacks and the sense of fear and paranoia is rising again. Do I like that the price of the Manchester bombings is that the city center is now absolutely drowning in CCTV? No. Do I like that the price of the bridge attacks in London is the huge barriers to protect pedestrians on Westminster, Waterloo and London Bridges? No. Do I like that every time I go into a concert hall or sports venue, I have to have my bags checked and a metal detector is run over me? No. Do I like that there hasn't been a proper rubbish bin in a train station or bus station since the 1980s, lest it is used to place a bomb - as was a favoured technique of the IRA on many occasions? No. I hate all of it. But would I rather all that, than have to bear the misery of more actual deaths of innocent civilians? Yes.
piltdownman 1y ago
The US already has this via the UK, who've been tapping the undersea cables of EU members for 20+ years. Literally everything transmitted via Ireland - home of the DPC function for most of the US MNCs in the EU, the only US customs clearance on European Soil, and Datacentre hub for Amzn/Goog/Appl etc... https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-gchq-tapped-irish-internet-cables-1.2019492 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-g...
- wkat4242 1y ago
  That's data in transit, they wouldn't be able to view end to end encrypted content with that. Chatcontrol specifically aims to break that.
  - piltdownman 1y ago
    I mean you're not wrong re: DiT vs DaR, I was more just pointing out the Room 641A equivalence on an extra-territorial level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A In terms of e2e chat encryption, binary blobs and 'managed' mobile platforms render it somewhat of a moot point to me. Bad actors can either be 0day'd or Social Engineered for those with advanced OpSec. To date though, the most successful network was Encrochat - an OTR-based messaging app which routed conversations through a central server based in France, which was eventually compromised by French police with a malware allowed them to read messages before they were sent and record lock screen passwords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat Europol got a taste for the heady power of it - The chief of the Dutch National Police Force, Jannine van den Berg , compared the malware to "sitting at the table where criminals were chatting among themselves". Now the reality is that the equivalent of the Clipper Chip 'key escrow' is now implementable at a Firmware/Mandatory Push Update level, and probably as part of a 'secure' walled garden app-store API in future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Arkhaine_kupo 1y ago
> Though they forget that NSA is only for terrorism purposes Yep thats def true, thats 100% the real reason and only purpose of the largest domestic agency
- wkat4242 1y ago
  I meant it's not for policing. I'm sure they do their geopolitical manipulation like when echelon was used to get a one over on airbus. But the NSA wouldn't provide evidence in criminal prosecutions but europol is all about that.
orwin 1y ago
That's where I'm extremely opposed to conservatives/reactionaries of my country: they identify some issues correctly imho, but we're in total disagreement of the root cause, and thus on how to solve it. To me, the US have way to much influence, and it's destroying us. Its NGOs would never have qualified as NGO here (Thorn is only an example), yet we let them lobby as if they weren't weird, dark money adjacent groups. Worst, the Atlas network and all its foundations/schools are definitely culturally USian, yet they try (and succeed) in redefining Europe culture (the 'please think about the children' is definitely from there) and importing US culture wars we never cared about until the late 2000s. Europe and the EU is slowly turning into the US, our governments allow it, and I think that we should pump the brakes, fast. I like the US, I like people there, but I don't want my country to become a satellite of the US.

philipwhiuk 1y ago

Terrorism is basically "whatever the government at the time doesn't like" anyway

PaulRobinson 1y ago
No, terrorism "is the use or threat of serious violence, damage to property, or disruption of [...] systems to advance a political, religious, racial, or ideological cause, with the aim of influencing a government or international organization, or of intimidating the public." "Whatever the government at the time doesn't like", is best described as "opposition". It's a healthy and critical component of a free and fair democracy. One that is increasingly silenced in the modern World, much to our shame when future generations judge us. While I understand the point behind old line "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", the key point is that both terrorism and "freedom fighting" are about resorting to the use of violence, and the democracy involved (if it was ever present), has failed when people resort to such violence. I say this as a man who unfortunately has suffered the fear, paranoia and threat of the Provisional IRA, ISIS-attributed cells, and the hard-right provoking riots in the cities and towns I've lived in from an early age. And that is the point of terrorism - it is meant to induce fear and paranoia and a sense of threat that makes us all want to do anything to make it go away, including surrendering our fundamental rights and rubber-stamping legislation that gives agencies the right to erase our privacy - and by extension our freedom - that raises the question of what's truly worse?
- uncircle 1y ago
  > I say this as a man who unfortunately has suffered the fear, paranoia and threat of the Provisional IRA, ISIS-attributed cells, and the hard-right provoking riots in the cities and towns I've lived in from an early age. > that is the point of terrorism - it is meant to induce fear and paranoia and a sense of threat that makes us all want to do anything to make it go away, including surrendering our fundamental rights and rubber-stamping legislation that gives agencies the right to erase our privacy Are you describing bomb-wearing terrorists here, or the fables of child safety that's being used by people in power to erect a surveillance state before our very eyes?
  - PaulRobinson 1y ago
    The Provisional IRA destroyed the center of my home city (Manchester) with a bomb in the back of a lorry that weighed over 1,500kgs. While growing up in the years before that attack, I was regularly evacuated from shops and other buildings in the center so that controlled detonations could take place of smaller devices. ISIS-attributed cells conducted attacks with bombs in London and Manchester over many years, starting with the 7/7 attacks on tube lines and bus routes I happen to use sometimes. On the 22nd March 2017, my partner crossed Westminster Bridge on her way to the theater about 30-45 minutes before an ISIS-affiliated attacker used a car to mow down pedestrians (and because she'd made it to the theater and had her phone off, I wasn't able to contact her for the first hour or so). A month later (to the day), a suicide bomber detonated a device at a pop concert in my old home city, killing 22 people - many of them children. The bomber had made the bomb while living in an address about 40 feet from my old address when I lived in Manchester. A few weeks after that, another attack happened on London Bridge and Borough Market, on streets and in pubs where I had been socialising the week before. I was fortunate that I, and those I care about, were not hurt or killed in these incidents. But that was fortune, not skill - a slightly delay here, or a decision to "not go this week, let's go next week", and I would have been in the middle of it all. And these, I should point out, are not isolated incidents. The full list on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Great_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... - is quite a thing. It's quite likely that most people living in a major city (or even large town), in the UK today of a similar age to myself (late 40s), will have memories of nearby terrorist attacks in their lifetimes. Yes, there are fables of child safety at play, and since 2021 the mood has switched so perhaps there is a lesser sense of urgency, but we're now seeing the hard right starting to be responsible for more terrorist attacks and the sense of fear and paranoia is rising again. Do I like that the price of the Manchester bombings is that the city center is now absolutely drowning in CCTV? No. Do I like that the price of the bridge attacks in London is the huge barriers to protect pedestrians on Westminster, Waterloo and London Bridges? No. Do I like that every time I go into a concert hall or sports venue, I have to have my bags checked and a metal detector is run over me? No. Do I like that there hasn't been a proper rubbish bin in a train station or bus station since the 1980s, lest it is used to place a bomb - as was a favoured technique of the IRA on many occasions? No. I hate all of it. But would I rather all that, than have to bear the misery of more actual deaths of innocent civilians? Yes.

piltdownman 1y ago

The US already has this via the UK, who've been tapping the undersea cables of EU members for 20+ years. Literally everything transmitted via Ireland - home of the DPC function for most of the US MNCs in the EU, the only US customs clearance on European Soil, and Datacentre hub for Amzn/Goog/Appl etc... https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-gchq-tapped-irish-internet-cables-1.2019492 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/uk-spy-base-g...

wkat4242 1y ago
That's data in transit, they wouldn't be able to view end to end encrypted content with that. Chatcontrol specifically aims to break that.
- piltdownman 1y ago
  I mean you're not wrong re: DiT vs DaR, I was more just pointing out the Room 641A equivalence on an extra-territorial level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A In terms of e2e chat encryption, binary blobs and 'managed' mobile platforms render it somewhat of a moot point to me. Bad actors can either be 0day'd or Social Engineered for those with advanced OpSec. To date though, the most successful network was Encrochat - an OTR-based messaging app which routed conversations through a central server based in France, which was eventually compromised by French police with a malware allowed them to read messages before they were sent and record lock screen passwords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncroChat Europol got a taste for the heady power of it - The chief of the Dutch National Police Force, Jannine van den Berg , compared the malware to "sitting at the table where criminals were chatting among themselves". Now the reality is that the equivalent of the Clipper Chip 'key escrow' is now implementable at a Firmware/Mandatory Push Update level, and probably as part of a 'secure' walled garden app-store API in future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

Arkhaine_kupo 1y ago

> Though they forget that NSA is only for terrorism purposes Yep thats def true, thats 100% the real reason and only purpose of the largest domestic agency

wkat4242 1y ago
I meant it's not for policing. I'm sure they do their geopolitical manipulation like when echelon was used to get a one over on airbus. But the NSA wouldn't provide evidence in criminal prosecutions but europol is all about that.

orwin 1y ago

That's where I'm extremely opposed to conservatives/reactionaries of my country: they identify some issues correctly imho, but we're in total disagreement of the root cause, and thus on how to solve it. To me, the US have way to much influence, and it's destroying us. Its NGOs would never have qualified as NGO here (Thorn is only an example), yet we let them lobby as if they weren't weird, dark money adjacent groups. Worst, the Atlas network and all its foundations/schools are definitely culturally USian, yet they try (and succeed) in redefining Europe culture (the 'please think about the children' is definitely from there) and importing US culture wars we never cared about until the late 2000s. Europe and the EU is slowly turning into the US, our governments allow it, and I think that we should pump the brakes, fast. I like the US, I like people there, but I don't want my country to become a satellite of the US.