10 ms·

So... if we all care so much about shooting down the bad idea, why is nobody proposing opposite legislation: a bill enshrining a right to private communications

by derefr 7mo ago

So... if we all care so much about shooting down the bad idea, why is nobody proposing opposite legislation: a bill enshrining a right to private communications, such that bills like this one would become impossible to even table? Is it just that there's no "privacy lobby" interested in getting even one lawyer around to sit down and write it up? Or is there at least one such bill floating around, but no EU member state has been willing to table it for discussion?

triska 7mo ago
Quoting from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012P/TXT https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... : "Article 7 Respect for private and family life Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications. Article 8 Protection of personal data 1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. 2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified. 3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."
- petermcneeley 7mo ago
  You know that those pieces of paper mean nothing.
  - rvz 7mo ago
    Thank you for telling them. Governments do not care about anyone.
    - rolandog 7mo ago
      In theory, governments are made up of citizens. In practice, once the citizens are corrupted into corporate shills, they become politicians. They have traded their humanity for business class seats and dining at restaurants that cater to those whose entire personality is talking about their investment portfolio.
      - microtonal 7mo ago
        Oh, please, stop this tired ‘victim of corrupt bureaucrats‘ framing. People have real choice in EP elections. There are parties that will always stand up for citizens’ rights. If they had enough seats, they could have voted this item off the agenda. Yet, people continue to choose the same conservatives and radical right over and over again, because they are enraged about immigrants and identity politics. Blame the voters.
        kuerbel 7mo ago
        There is a famous German comedian that invented a figure known as "The Kangaroo". It once said: "Whether left-wing or right-wing terrorism – I see no difference there." "Yes, yes," calls the kangaroo, "the ones set foreigners on fire, the others cars. And cars are worse, because it could have been mine. I don't own any foreigners."
        modo_mario 7mo ago
        Why continue with the increased migration that the majority of the population has generally opposed then? One could have avoided those discussion points. Also what you group as the radical right doesn't tend to be supportive of this idea. They full well know they are at times at the receiving end of web control legislation and drives atm. Same for 'radical left' groups. It's the conservatives that at times make some fuzz about migration to draw votes from the former whilst keeping said migration going since it favours some of the companies they (and a load of other established parties) draw support from.
        rolandog 7mo ago
        Yes, there's lots of blame to pass around; but the system does reward corporate psychopaths which leaves US citizens having to choose — as South Park aptly put it — between a douche and a turd sandwich.
  - Macha 7mo ago
    In theory these limit the power of the EU, while anything the EU parliament passes can just be undone as easily by a future EU parliament. If you don't believe the EU charter provides any protection, why would you believe an EU law would be any different?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - port11 7mo ago
    The Charter has been used by the courts to shoot down incoming legislation. So, in a way, those pieces of paper mean everything, as without them legislation would pass without the judiciary branch being a check on the Bloc’s powers. Your comment is merely cynical.
- narmiouh 7mo ago
  It clearly states here in 2 “consent of the person concerned OR some other legitimate basis laid down the law”, any random law will trump personal consent
  - layer8 7mo ago
    It doesn’t remove the “right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.” The law cannot be random, it must ensure “fair processing” and be limited to “specific purposes”, and the European Court of Justice as well as the ECHR will decide what constitutes a “legitimate basis” in that context. Furthermore, “Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her”, which ensures transparency of what is being collected. Last but not least, a number of EU countries enshrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence in their constitution.
    - spwa4 7mo ago
      Secrecy of correspondence only applies to sealed physical letters, so it has zero applicability to this law and provides zero protection against scanning of private messages. Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...
      - Muromec 7mo ago
        Secrecy of correspondence still has exceptions. That's what is always lost in these discussions -- every right of every person is not absolute. Just because you have a right to personal property, doesn't mean you don't have to pay taxes or store nuclear material in your basement. That's the hard part. But end to end encryption with forward secrecy at no cost to user makes your right to private communication absolute. It's a new thing and the balancers can't balance it against other rights of other people, so this happens.
        cwillu 7mo ago
        The ends still have the decryption keys, so the result is the same as with a physical letter: you have to acquire the physical object holding the key material.
- blks 7mo ago
  I feel we need something much more strongly worded to protect our mail, paper or electronic, messages and other communications from being read, not just “respect”.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    This exists in a number of EU member states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
    - thewebguyd 7mo ago
      The problem is, in all of those member states, they all have carve outs for "national security." Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy. Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs. Having it as a right isn't enough. National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.
      - layer8 7mo ago
        Rights are never absolute, they always have to be weighed against each other. The weighing can and should be debated, and needs strong protections when put into practice, but demanding an absolute is not reasonable.
        soraminazuki 7mo ago
        That's how human rights abuses are justified though. Every single time. This whole thread is talking about exactly that.
        dmitrygr 7mo ago
        I disagree. A right to privacy not only can be demanded, it should be demanded.
- einpoklum 7mo ago
  Let's parse this a little. Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc. As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy. You would have liked to see wording like: * "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right." * "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy." and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.
  - Muromec 7mo ago
    > This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc. Which is... okay? Government gonna government, that's what we pay it to do.
  - vaginaphobic 7mo ago
    [dead]
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
noir_lord 7mo ago
It already violates Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter which is supposed to prevent stuff like this. The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.
Pay08 7mo ago
Chat control is already illegal according to EU law, and has previously been ruled as such by the ECHR when Romania was trying to implement a chat control law that did actually pass, in 2014. But documents are documents (even the Rome statute), and can be rewritten.
dgxyz 7mo ago
There’s no point. The only way you can fix this is to pretty heavily market the situation and publicise and shame the lobbyist scum pushing this. And their associated ties.
thewebguyd 7mo ago
The right to private communication is already enshrined in the EU. Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well). The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security. Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power. Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.
Noaidi 7mo ago
You don’t care by writing new legislation, you care by forming boycotts against the corporations that are not fighting back against the scanning. The world is not controlled by democracy, it is controlled by money and the oligarchs.
- JoshTriplett 7mo ago
  We can do more than one thing. Do not cede the weapon of lobbying to be used solely by opponents. You can get a lot done by talking to people.
throwaway27448 7mo ago
I don't think that's a very sensical right (like most rights, frankly). Everyone has limits to the privacy they can expect. But we should have a social contract where we can expect privacy between mutually consenting parties intending to have private communication (eg not in a public square) without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.
- tekne 7mo ago
  Technology means there is only one truly stable compromise, imo: I am free to use whatever technical means at my disposal to encrypt my communications and those of my customers (!), and you can try to read them as much as you want. Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you. And yet metadata collection is both unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and should be enough. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of thought.
  - Muromec 7mo ago
    > a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you. With a server on the other side of a geopolitical conflict (actual conflict, not a mere discontinuity in legalscape) you trade a risk of the government reading your chats for a risk of the same government (which you don't trust for a good reason) locking you up for treason and espionage.
- Muromec 7mo ago
  >... without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed. How is that supposed to work with e2e encrypted chats?
vaylian 7mo ago
Past laws of this type are: - The GDPR - The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0
- amarant 7mo ago
  If this law, or some future version of it, passes, I will derive great pleasure from a simple bash script sending a gdpr right to be forgotten request to eye European parliament in a daily basis
follie 7mo ago
I think the greatest risk to the EU is the sheer volume of communications it allows to travel without end-to-end encryption. Financial, infrastructure, personal political sentiment.. What doesn't a foreign enemy get volumes of minable data on?
weakened_malloc 7mo ago
(I mentioned this in another comment) Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.
- rcbdev 7mo ago
  And who exactly do you think elected the 'powers that be'? The issue is that voter turnout for EU parliamentary elections is awful in comparison to national elections, especially among more conservative voters - meaning that the political orientation between the parliament and commission is a little skewed.
  - weakened_malloc 7mo ago
    Sure, but then you end up with stuff like this happening time and time again. If something doesn't pass the first time, put it through again, and again.
JXavierH 7mo ago
[flagged]

by derefr 7mo ago

triska 7mo ago

Quoting from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012P/TXT https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... : "Article 7 Respect for private and family life Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications. Article 8 Protection of personal data 1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. 2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified. 3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."

petermcneeley 7mo ago
You know that those pieces of paper mean nothing.
- rvz 7mo ago
  Thank you for telling them. Governments do not care about anyone.
  - rolandog 7mo ago
    In theory, governments are made up of citizens. In practice, once the citizens are corrupted into corporate shills, they become politicians. They have traded their humanity for business class seats and dining at restaurants that cater to those whose entire personality is talking about their investment portfolio.
    - microtonal 7mo ago
      Oh, please, stop this tired ‘victim of corrupt bureaucrats‘ framing. People have real choice in EP elections. There are parties that will always stand up for citizens’ rights. If they had enough seats, they could have voted this item off the agenda. Yet, people continue to choose the same conservatives and radical right over and over again, because they are enraged about immigrants and identity politics. Blame the voters.
      - kuerbel 7mo ago
        There is a famous German comedian that invented a figure known as "The Kangaroo". It once said: "Whether left-wing or right-wing terrorism – I see no difference there." "Yes, yes," calls the kangaroo, "the ones set foreigners on fire, the others cars. And cars are worse, because it could have been mine. I don't own any foreigners."
      - modo_mario 7mo ago
        Why continue with the increased migration that the majority of the population has generally opposed then? One could have avoided those discussion points. Also what you group as the radical right doesn't tend to be supportive of this idea. They full well know they are at times at the receiving end of web control legislation and drives atm. Same for 'radical left' groups. It's the conservatives that at times make some fuzz about migration to draw votes from the former whilst keeping said migration going since it favours some of the companies they (and a load of other established parties) draw support from.
      - rolandog 7mo ago
        Yes, there's lots of blame to pass around; but the system does reward corporate psychopaths which leaves US citizens having to choose — as South Park aptly put it — between a douche and a turd sandwich.
- Macha 7mo ago
  In theory these limit the power of the EU, while anything the EU parliament passes can just be undone as easily by a future EU parliament. If you don't believe the EU charter provides any protection, why would you believe an EU law would be any different?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- port11 7mo ago
  The Charter has been used by the courts to shoot down incoming legislation. So, in a way, those pieces of paper mean everything, as without them legislation would pass without the judiciary branch being a check on the Bloc’s powers. Your comment is merely cynical.
narmiouh 7mo ago
It clearly states here in 2 “consent of the person concerned OR some other legitimate basis laid down the law”, any random law will trump personal consent
- layer8 7mo ago
  It doesn’t remove the “right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.” The law cannot be random, it must ensure “fair processing” and be limited to “specific purposes”, and the European Court of Justice as well as the ECHR will decide what constitutes a “legitimate basis” in that context. Furthermore, “Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her”, which ensures transparency of what is being collected. Last but not least, a number of EU countries enshrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence in their constitution.
  - spwa4 7mo ago
    Secrecy of correspondence only applies to sealed physical letters, so it has zero applicability to this law and provides zero protection against scanning of private messages. Also it isn't respected in most types of criminal trials. If a sealed physical letter is opened and proves fraud, for example ...
    - Muromec 7mo ago
      Secrecy of correspondence still has exceptions. That's what is always lost in these discussions -- every right of every person is not absolute. Just because you have a right to personal property, doesn't mean you don't have to pay taxes or store nuclear material in your basement. That's the hard part. But end to end encryption with forward secrecy at no cost to user makes your right to private communication absolute. It's a new thing and the balancers can't balance it against other rights of other people, so this happens.
      - cwillu 7mo ago
        The ends still have the decryption keys, so the result is the same as with a physical letter: you have to acquire the physical object holding the key material.
blks 7mo ago
I feel we need something much more strongly worded to protect our mail, paper or electronic, messages and other communications from being read, not just “respect”.
- layer8 7mo ago
  This exists in a number of EU member states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
  - thewebguyd 7mo ago
    The problem is, in all of those member states, they all have carve outs for "national security." Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy. Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs. Having it as a right isn't enough. National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.
    - layer8 7mo ago
      Rights are never absolute, they always have to be weighed against each other. The weighing can and should be debated, and needs strong protections when put into practice, but demanding an absolute is not reasonable.
      - soraminazuki 7mo ago
        That's how human rights abuses are justified though. Every single time. This whole thread is talking about exactly that.
      - dmitrygr 7mo ago
        I disagree. A right to privacy not only can be demanded, it should be demanded.
einpoklum 7mo ago
Let's parse this a little. Article 7 codifies "respect for [one's] private life" and "respect for [one's] private communications". Well, "respect" is a vague notion. This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc. As for article 8: Here it is "protection of personal data" and "fair processing". It does not say "protection from government access"; and "processing" is when the government or some other party already has your data. In fact, as others point out, even this wording has an explicit legitimization of violation of privacy and 'protection' whenever there is a law which defines something as "legitimate basis" for invading your privacy. You would have liked to see wording like: * "Privacy in one's home, personal life, communications and digital interactions is a fundamental right." * "The EU, its members, its bodies, its officers and whoever acts on its behalf shall not invade individuals' privacy." and probably something about a non-absolute right to anonymity. Codified exceptions should be limited and not open-ended.
- Muromec 7mo ago
  > This does not clearly imply that the government is not allowed to read your communications, or otherwise spy on you, if it believes it has good reason. It will do so "respectfully", or supposedly minimize the intrusion etc. Which is... okay? Government gonna government, that's what we pay it to do.
- vaginaphobic 7mo ago
  [dead]
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

noir_lord 7mo ago

It already violates Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter which is supposed to prevent stuff like this. The reality is that they'll just keep pushing it from different angles, they only have to get lucky once, we (or EU citizens, we left and have our own issues) need to be lucky every time - much like an adverserial relationship where you are on the defending side from a cyberattack...funny that really.

Pay08 7mo ago

Chat control is already illegal according to EU law, and has previously been ruled as such by the ECHR when Romania was trying to implement a chat control law that did actually pass, in 2014. But documents are documents (even the Rome statute), and can be rewritten.

dgxyz 7mo ago

There’s no point. The only way you can fix this is to pretty heavily market the situation and publicise and shame the lobbyist scum pushing this. And their associated ties.

thewebguyd 7mo ago

The right to private communication is already enshrined in the EU. Article 7, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: Respect for private and family life (and probably a couple other sections in there as well). The problem is national security exceptions. Chat control and other similar bills are trying to carve out exceptions to privacy laws under the excuse of national security. Also its politically cheap to introduce surveillance or to expand state power, it's comparatively extremely difficult to pass laws that specifically restrict state power. Privacy laws are well and good, but they exist. The problem is we need to stop allowing "public safety" or "national security" to be a trump card that allows exceptions to said laws, and good luck getting any government to ever agree that privacy is more important than national security.

Noaidi 7mo ago

You don’t care by writing new legislation, you care by forming boycotts against the corporations that are not fighting back against the scanning. The world is not controlled by democracy, it is controlled by money and the oligarchs.

JoshTriplett 7mo ago
We can do more than one thing. Do not cede the weapon of lobbying to be used solely by opponents. You can get a lot done by talking to people.

throwaway27448 7mo ago

I don't think that's a very sensical right (like most rights, frankly). Everyone has limits to the privacy they can expect. But we should have a social contract where we can expect privacy between mutually consenting parties intending to have private communication (eg not in a public square) without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed.

tekne 7mo ago
Technology means there is only one truly stable compromise, imo: I am free to use whatever technical means at my disposal to encrypt my communications and those of my customers (!), and you can try to read them as much as you want. Combined with the right to communicate across borders, you can get quite a bit of privacy: a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you. And yet metadata collection is both unavoidable (if you don't collect it, your geopolitical opponents will) and should be enough. We don't need chat control in a world where I get precision-targeted ads -- it's not even about freedom of speech or privacy, it's about freedom of thought.
- Muromec 7mo ago
  > a server in both sides of a geopolitical conflict and they've got to collaborate to track you. With a server on the other side of a geopolitical conflict (actual conflict, not a mere discontinuity in legalscape) you trade a risk of the government reading your chats for a risk of the same government (which you don't trust for a good reason) locking you up for treason and espionage.
Muromec 7mo ago
>... without reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed. How is that supposed to work with e2e encrypted chats?

vaylian 7mo ago

Past laws of this type are: - The GDPR - The ePrivacy directive, which is explicitly derogated (sabotaged) by chat control 1.0

amarant 7mo ago
If this law, or some future version of it, passes, I will derive great pleasure from a simple bash script sending a gdpr right to be forgotten request to eye European parliament in a daily basis

follie 7mo ago

I think the greatest risk to the EU is the sheer volume of communications it allows to travel without end-to-end encryption. Financial, infrastructure, personal political sentiment.. What doesn't a foreign enemy get volumes of minable data on?

weakened_malloc 7mo ago

(I mentioned this in another comment) Because the people voting it down are the elected MEPs, whilst the people putting it up to parliament are the European Commission. The EC are appointed, rather than elected. Which means the powers that be just appoint people who are going to push through laws like this, that they want. The MEPs can't put up bills to be voted on.

rcbdev 7mo ago
And who exactly do you think elected the 'powers that be'? The issue is that voter turnout for EU parliamentary elections is awful in comparison to national elections, especially among more conservative voters - meaning that the political orientation between the parliament and commission is a little skewed.
- weakened_malloc 7mo ago
  Sure, but then you end up with stuff like this happening time and time again. If something doesn't pass the first time, put it through again, and again.

JXavierH 7mo ago

[flagged]