It is sad that EU and USA are falling away from eachother. IMO we should try and stick together in these times. No doubt the US has financed a lot of things for te entire world and no doubt the European countries have put in a lot of effort too.
I don't think we should argue over it.
We have issues with privacy rights, elder burden, geopolitical turmoil, growing debt burden, environment and so on in all places we need to look forward and stick together...
I don't think it's a matter of "US-hate," of renewed nationalism, or of relations collapsing randomly. Let's not pretend PRISM didn't happen, that Cambridge Analytica didn't happen, or that one government didn't threaten to invade another government. All the news points to one fact: if the American government gives an order, American tech companies obey. The message is clear: being a customer of a company means being at the mercy of the government where the company is headquartered. Who would want to find themselves in the vortex when a certain government decides to devote its Two Minutes Hate to another place in the world?
What's wrong with having more sovereignty over your data and infrastructure? You don't need to stop working on the mentioned issues together but cutting foreign spies the access to your citizens data and reducing their leverage.
That's life, spies going to spy, state psychopaths from the military and the three-latter agencies exist regardless whether you see them or not and they don't care about the "common good". They must be taken into the account.
The less power humans have over each other - the better. Instead of pressuring each other to bring profits people would be able to speak like equals.
To me as a European, this is not only about the dystopia that is becoming the tech survailance of society but it is a perfect example of what I feel the EU is. It is a disgusting dysfunctional institution that should have never been created in my opinion.
This is what we have... Unelected bureaucrats using every opportunistic tool they can to, in my opinion get rid of democracy. What are we fighting for at this point? Personally I have lost all faith in the EU and I'm embarrassed to be living here. I'm so disgusted by politicians and the obvious de-route of democracy.
It is a renewel of something highly unpopular that was voted down already. It is how the EU operates look at the other comments here about "democracy". It is put to vote on last minute where they know MEPs are on vacation... Well the ** should not go on vacation before the vacation starts but that is just another thing about EU! Why are they in vacation before it starts?! It is so complicated rules that not even the news and experts totally understand what is going on.
I know MEPs are. But who ellected Ursula? Who as far as i understand is the mother of this survailance... Calling This orban/Putin propaganda is Low. It is removing focus from the fact that i point out democracy is slowly withering in EU and survaulance is growing. Just look at the survailance lad for cars that was accepted the other day. I have no love for either of Putin/orban im simply telling my experience not making propaganda!
Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to.
The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see their side, how new tech create new problems, and help solve it in least privacy invasive ways.
Otherwise you will always be seen as somebody who has shady agenda. It's just reality. Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
But chat control and age verification are different things.
> But chat control and age verification are different things.
Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).
Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.
If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.
Well, here's a case when police did their work. A massive international bust happened because the police was able to trick gangs to use an app that was not actually e2ee. And chances that it happens again are almost zero.
I have some faith in the lack of wisdom of (most) criminals. Most of them aren't geniuses, aren't super sophisticated, aren't good at following technical rules with 100% discipline.
So it's likely to work again - not as often as a law-abiding citizen would like, but not never.
And yet another notorious international bust just didn't happen recently despite the fact that the island loungers not only didn't use e2ee but actively made their crimes abundantly obvious to the public.
> Ordinary people do not care about e2ee. Gotta read the room.
It's a matter of phrasing things. Moxie had this illustrative take: If your chat is not e2ee, it'a a group chat. It's you, your mom, every secret service in the world and some ISP employees as well. If we could clarify to our social circles and broader society that every non-e2ee chat can be browsed by some overpaid freckled 20-something borded out of his mind at a FAANG or an ISP then the viewpoint could change.
Tons of people use IG and I think they pretty much know that it's them, the other guy and whatever number of contractors monitoring chats. They just don't care.
Maybe one of the most helpful parallels is with mail. I think US and other countries have strict laws about mail communication privacy. Someone can in theory open your mail but it's strictly regulated and not done in a total way.
Also I do think talking about future malicious government prosecuting people based on what was collected previously is actually a good one. But just talking about privacy may be a little too vague.
I suspect a lot of people don't mind/care that the list is expanded to those groups. That's really a big part of the issue. It's better framing, regardless though.
More than that. Who cares if the state can read your chats/etc, when you believe you aren't the kind of people the state wants to persecute. Why deny the state ever more tools to go after people, as long as you think it's going to use them against the people you want it to go after.
I would add though that the opinion is not entirely irrational.
For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions). Then why do you care about another way to label you, if you think they already do it, but randomly.
I feel that the privacy discussions do not acknowledge at all there are many other structural society issues. Sure it would make an evil-intelligent government have a harder time, but will not improve at all life with an evil-idiot government, and to me it seems those are a bit more prevalent (note: idiot = implementing solutions that will not solve the problems they claim they do, while them honestly thinking they do solve them)
> For many people the state is inefficient, illogical, evil and goes after them without any reason (ex: think COVID restrictions).
And that is an argument for agreeing to give more ways to go after you to that supposedly evil government?
I'd understand if people have high trust in government and argued "Yeah it could be misused, but I trust the government not to do that". That still misses the part that governments can change, but at least it's somewhat consistent.
>Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down.
And none of these things were ever made illegal.
>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.
I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.
Not sure it's ever been particularly difficult to be a criminal. If anything, the tricky part has always been establishing who you can and can't trust.
What are you talking about? Thieves' cant, burner phone, clandestine meetings--these are all things that make crime easier, and none of them are illegal. We ban crime, not things that allow crime.
How is it complicated? Having to do these things made crime difficult. There's higher barrier to entry and cost to pay. It's more difficult to scale across borders. Not having to do them makes it easier.
The internet makes crime easier; should we ban it too? Before cars, you could only steal what you could carry--maybe we should abolish cars too. "Barrier to entry for crime" is not a useful metric, because it encompasses so many things.
Ordinary people tend to care about privacy from government intrusion when you talk to them about it, and e2ee is so prevalent for lots of everyday communication that it isn't something they think about.
Discord recently introduced e2ee for voice chat. Apple has iMessage and Facetime. Whatsapp and to a lesser extent Signal are massively popular.
If you asked and ordinary person "Should the government be able to retroactively access your voice and written communications?" most people would probably react negatively.
Sure, in the pre-computer world, the US could possibly intercept letters and phone calls, but the complexity of that was high enough that it meant it could only happen with really strong cause and cost. With the barrier to scraping up unencrypted communications at near-zero (for governments and hyperscalers), the need for everyday citizens to have protected communications is higher.
I think the below comments answer rather well for me. But of course you are rigth that criminals use technology... I just don't see it as the main issue here.
I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash... But maybe some use crypto yes. And maybe criminals use e2ee. And Marybe you are rigth that it is a problematic thing for law enforcement. That is not the point though.
The point is criminalizing ordinary people for something completely reasonable like wanting to have the ability to talk in private. And talk in private about what they think of the current leadership...
> I think that most common currency for criminals are still just cold cash
It doesn't scale as well. Can't go cross-border easily etc.
I agree that it's wrong but I'm talking about common people (and lawmakers who care about) perception. Until they get burned they won't care and might not take your side like that.
I think the EU thinks that opposition to the EU must be from foreign actors. This is why citizens has to be surveiled so that the EU can catch the foreign actors or some goofy crap like that.
My point being that the opposition to the EU comes from EU citizens of the EU... Because the EU make stuff like chat control...
Or it could be we have fully crossed over into stasi territory already and they are having a great cozy party while they make life more and more unbearable for the population?!
IMO it's conflict of interest of some short-sighted naive idealists vs people who want to get stuff done.
For example, solar. Shit ton of euromoneys is poured into subsidies. But those subsidies are not geofenced. Thus vast majority of people go for chinese stuff. It could have been much better to subsidise locally produced components only. Then price would be +/- the same.
Now chinese components are dirt cheap with all the subsidies. I myself went for chinese components, because break-even period was like 5 vs 10 years. I'll just pihole the inverter from calling home once I figure out how to get some statistics without the manufacturer's app.
I guess some people decided it's better to get 2-3x more solar installed power ASAP rather than prop up the local solar industry.
I think Denmark is one of the most surveiled countries. And with the most compliant population. They call it trust... Denmark is not the fairytale they try to market them selves as. This is closer to their true color in my opinion. You could also try to look up the cases with former and current politicians in dk who actually have gotten caught perpetrating the very thing chat control is said to stop.
I'm to afraid of the f'ing EU to mention specific names here... But maybe some braver souls will
Agree. A while ago I met many normies who just complied. Now there is so much legislation that even the normies are starting to ask what is going on. But I guess that of exactly why they now need chat control! To get the herd back to work...
I don't think we should argue over it.
We have issues with privacy rights, elder burden, geopolitical turmoil, growing debt burden, environment and so on in all places we need to look forward and stick together...