Young people in 13 EU countries refuse surveillance of online communication
edri.org
edri.org
"According to the results of the survey, 80% of young people aged 13 to 17 years old from 13 EU Member States would not feel comfortable being politically active or exploring their sexuality if authorities were able to monitor their digital communication, in order to look for child sexual abuse."
How would you feel if all the adverts you saw were for non heterosexual people, wuld you feel trolled, harassed, intimidated?
Now take those same algorithms that were used to target adverts at you for psychological purposes, and apply them to websites displaying news stories and social media like reddit, and search engine results.
Would that amplify the feelings of intimidation and harrassment?
Because that is exactly what is going on right now perpetrated by the US tech giants with the collusion of the of various states.
The mere mention of this activity, could also make you aware or more aware of this so that you can start to spot it being done to you and others around you.
The timing of questions asked are important, as any court room lawyer will know, especially if the defendants answer can be later associated and used against them.
The fact this situation is allowed to exist in the hands of unaccountable people and entities namely businesses, is arguably illegal if the laws were to exist against targeted advertising, but we all know big business would b.e against this.
TLDR targeted advertising is a way to psychologically hound people into suicide. Its a murder weapon exploiting the needs of business to be efficient with their advertising spend.
The criminal perpetrators rely on their victims keeping quiet because no one wants to be humiliated, in much the same way if your parents were wrong 'uns they rely on that parental bond to keep you quiet.
Companies use that data to decide what products and services they'll tell you they offer, what they'll tell you their policies are, and what prices you'll pay. You might be charged one price and told you have 14 days to make a return, while the next person will be charged less for the same item and be told the return policy is 30 days. Companies are even using that data to decide things like how long to leave you on hold when you call them.
Insurance companies use that data to decide how much to charge you. Employers use that data to decide who to hire. Political parties use that data to mislead and manipulate voters. Activists and extremists use that data to watch and target groups and individuals they don't like. Stalkers and abusive partners use that data to track their victims. Police use that data to find suspects and lawyers can use it in court rooms as evidence against you.
Being surveilled would (maybe) be okay sometimes if it were only ever used for ads and nothing else, but that's simply not the reality we live in. That data lives forever and whoever has it, or can get it, will use it for whatever they want whenever they want to.
>67% rely on encrypted communication apps like WhatsApp or Signal
Most of them are keenly aware of exactly how information is shared or leaked. They know that if they do something stupid in public, there is a good chance of someone catching it on video, it being published, and them being teased or punished for it.
Perhaps those born in the 80's might have been happy to do something illegal or stupid as long as it was only trusted friends looking on. But those born in the 2000's won't do something like that even with the audience being just trusted friends for fear of evidence spreading later. They all know how to screenshot a snap message without being detected...
That's definitely the kind of thing we all knew ahead when we were 13-17.
I distinctly remember elementary school classes, some 25 years ago where we had to learn about computer safety and privacy, and what the possible consequences of posting things online could be. We were <10 years old and we understood.
I also remember a lot of kids in class working on their html website.
I don't see why we should have lower standards for kids today, it's so sad how it all turned out.
A teen wanting to discretely inform themselves on, let's say, sexual orientation, need to be careful about e.g. their Windows account and/or use a public device, mind their Chrome/Edge/... account, use another search engine than Google, use porn mode, be sure that the page they visit is not using Twitter/Google/Facebook/... trackers, clear cookies, clear profile, be careful with device fingerprinting, browser fingerprinting, etc.
At some point, this is a losing battle.
Hasn't happened yet. At least the not freaking out part hasn't.
Governments already covertly monitor online communications - probably since the beginning of the internet.
What's really being asked is whether this will be overtly done, with all the social, financial impacts of having private information being shared with the governance system and corporations.
That actually may be seen as a feature and not a bug for the authorities
And thats the intention of all of these new laws.
I mean "exploring your sexuality" via picture messaging, or physically with another person would be a crime in most European countries if you're a child.
Similarly, many political opinions are illegal to hold in Europe. Part of the justification of this law is that it will give the state extra powers to keep us safe from harmful opinions people hold in private. Currently they can only police harmful opinions expressed in public.
So yeah, this doesn't surprise me at all. The whole point is that kids are less free to explore their sexuality and that we are less able to discuss ideas the state disapproves of.
The right question to be asking here is whether the state is correct to impose these limitations on us?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41479620
Edit: Although, I suppose you could define reading ISIS content as an expression of ISIS beliefs, so maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.
To be fair, they're probably not brown so can't be the "bad" kind of terrorist.
Still OMG, thought crime.
You’re free to have thoughts - for now.
What's interesting is to look at the political systems and constitutional protections the young, educated Europeans flock to: In a survey of scientists from 16 countries[0], the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two.
There's a constant influx of these young, educated entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators coming here to America and the Bay Area. It's not a new trend; back in the 20th century America became a refuge for scientists from Europe wanting to escape! [1] [2]
I have to wonder what's Europe's end goal here... sure seems these measure won't help curb that brain drain.
[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...
Well, yeah, it is the intention, at least on the part of the major proponents of that kind of surveillance, in Europe and elsewhere.
But if the people being "protected" don't share that opinion, it's worth pointing that out.
Even if you don't trust their judgement because they're "just kids", you should listen to them about what actual effects a policy might have on their total experience. You may not have thought of everything.
That's what the link is saying.
> I mean "exploring your sexuality" via picture messaging, or physically with another person would be a crime in most European countries if you're a child.
If you're 8, sure.
If you're 16, and the other person is also 16? As far as I can tell, "exploring", right up to actual sexual intercourse, is legal for you in most European countries. In a lot of countries, it's legal in person but illegal in messaging, but that seems seems kind of perverse, actually.
That's why there's a problem with the word "child".
At least when and where I grew up, if you said "child" in normal conversation, that meant somebody roughly 12 or under. If you meant people older than that, you used words like "teenager". "Child" meant under 18 in a legal document, but that wasn't true anywhere but in a legal document.
When proponents argue in public about "protecting children" on the Internet, they intentionally shift between those meanings. Nearly every example they bring up is about adults trolling for preteens, or maybe adults trolling for young teens. They hope that, when they say "children are being sex-talked at", you'll think they mean children in the sense of children. They try to keep the focus there, except when they want to quote big numbers, at which point they get a lot more inclusive about the definition, and may or may not mention that they've done so.
Nonetheless, the rules they actually write tend to apply to all minors, not just preteens, communicating with each other, not just adults.
In the same way, when they talk about actual activities, they talk about physical sexual contact, or about things that might lead to that, or about sharing obviously sexual images, or "dirty talk" meant to arouse. But the kind of "exploring your sexuality" that gets included in the rules isn't just doing things to arouse each other. It can end up including confiding in your best friend that you think you're gay.
Anyway, if it's surveillance you're talking about, it kind of doesn't matter what is or isn't legal. The point is that they want to spy on everybody's legal communication, in order to find some people's illegal communication.
Knowing that could have a chilling effect on anybody, but especially on somebody young. Maybe they're uncertain about how things work or what's allowed. Maybe they don't want to have to watch themselves constantly to avoid accidentally slipping over some line.
Or maybe they justifiably think they're unusually likely to get flagged, just because of who they are. There will be false positives under any of these proposals. A computer, or even a human, can't always understand the full meaning of some isolated message, without knowing the context. Suppose you generate a hit, and even suppose that, after investigation, "nothing happens". Still, is everybody going to be comfortable when the police, or some kind of automated system, call their parents as part of checking out the "lead"? Especially when maybe they were trying to feel out the very limits of their own comfort zones?
It's worthwhile to consider a balance between convenience, plausible deniability (people don't really want to be that guy in the coffee shop on Tor), and privacy. Privacy platforms nowadays consider privacy above all else because most people heavily into privacy are purists that don't want to sacrifice any privacy in exchange for having more people to talk with. It's one of the reasons I still respect Telegram with all of its shortcomings, because even though it's relatively insecure in comparison to its competitors, it takes convenience into account and as such has more users than most all privacy-centric messengers while still providing end-to-end encryption for the people that desire it (at least in theory, the cryptography's a bit shaky).
If your options are social isolation or giving up your privacy, the choice is rather obvious for most people. And yes, not using the apps other people use does mean social isolation. Sure, your closest friends will contact you through other ways, but less frequently than they'd do if you were in the contact list of the app they use every day.
Discord is by far the most usable, accessible group chat I've seen.
People use Snapchat routinely for privacy not merely because of the hallmark feature wherein it (only supposedly, of course, as this is so easily defeated) helps you control images you send: it is so that they don't have to give their phone number to the guy they just met at the bar and are unsure they can trust, as giving out their phone number means people can trivially stalk you as having a phone number is essentially game over for privacy of everything except the content of the messages you are sending.
Using phone numbers means it is also prohibitively difficult / expensive for people to maintain multiple identities, which I will claim most people do these days (as younger generations are actually deeper and deeper into understanding the privacy tradeoff!!), whether to have a "friendsta", a "shitposting account", or to simply isolate circles. The people most in need of privacy thereby can't use Signal as it would publicly tie together all of their normally-separated personas (unless, at least, they have the money to buy and maintain multiple phones... which, of course, almost no one can).
And like... it doesn't even make sense for really serious cases like political protesters and dissidents! Your biggest actually-realistic issue--certainly at the local level (which includes most of the anarchists and extreme leftists I've met)--isn't going to be an international subpoena on Telegram or whatever: it is going to be an undercover cop getting into your online chat channel (maybe by taking a phone off someone who they arrest), who can now tie everyone's identity together--including people who aren't active in person (and so will never be caught by a cop at the venue)--without any serious effort using the phone numbers in the group (which even includes a list of the people who aren't actively posting anymore).
So yeah, sorry, but no: that Signal is requiring phone numbers for people to communicate privately is them building a UX that actively undermines actual privacy in a way even normal non-technical users are smart enough to realize isn't useful for them, and that they not only don't see it but then decide to spend all of their time throwing down against companies like WhatsApp--which use their protocol!!--instead of declaring that battle won and moving on to fight Snapchat and Telegram, isn't just incompetence... it is a travesty.
Let's put it this way: can you ever imagine a college student who decides to make the difficult decision to go into online sex work for a few months (which is a situation which already really sucks, btw; like: don't get me wrong here... society is fucked in every direction on this issue) being able to use Signal? There is a GOOD reason why these people--who absolutely are clinging to the shreds of their privacy way more than I ever have in my entire life to date--are using services like Snapchat and Telegram (or, if they are willing to make the tradeoff on getting some viral or even algorithmic discovery, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) and simply DO NOT use Signal.
Which is completely irrelevant because a typical circle of friends, even among techies, will have one such person at most, who will be mostly isolated anyways.
Discord is a superior chat mechanism for modern smartphone internet users in the same way that using crutches is a superior walking method for people with a broken leg.
Here we are in 2023 with huge commercial global data mills ingesting everything about everyone, with many people actually filing details of their private lives on Meta, tiktok etc every day...and yet edri is using a peashooter versus the EU and earnestly acting like it is still 1999..
EDRi are located in Brussels Belgium along with the EU HQ (the 'Tower of Babel' EU 'parliament' is in Strasbourg). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Digital_Rights
At this point with the introduction or mass adoption of eSIMs and iSIMs going to be embedded in IoT devices and phones in the coming years, the surveillance is going to only get much worse.
You know what it is really unbelievable right now, in this era?
People renouncing to convenience and attentions in exchange for their independence.
In my country so called anarchists are posting pictures of the revolts in the streets where you can literally see their faces on Facebook and Instagram.
Call me an old fart, but no pictures, no names was rule #1 when I went to protests in my teen age.
Find the amount of oppression that people are willing to put up with, and you've found the amount of oppression they are subjected to.
No it doesn't.
> Oppressive regimes (of whatever sort) can only persist with the consent of the populace
No. You are believing in modern nonsense about "people power". The populace has never done anything. "Proles and animals are free" for a reason. Any change has always been done by the elites.
The american populace didn't rise up against britain. It was only a tiny portion of the elites. The slaves didn't rise up against the masters. The populace never rises up because they have no means to do so. No more than cows can rise up against the ranchers.
History has always been elites vs the next level of elites.
> Find the amount of oppression that people are willing to put up with, and you've found the amount of oppression they are subjected to.
Nope. The elite oppress as much as they need to. The opinions of the populace never matters - in a monarchy, democracy or any other form of government.
Privacy is like money, it's something everyone wants, the keywords is wants, if you ask people in a survey they'll say they want their privacy, if you wait until they're tired and mindlessly scrolling some newsfeed and block the next video until they click some "I agree" thing, they will click it and pay for the access to whatever entertainement you're selling with whataver privacy they still have.
Come again when you find some data about people who took action to keep their privacy, not said yes in a survey.
What a question. Who in their right minds would say, "Yes, please! I want to have my communications surveilled like a nosy parent would but also have the force of the law behind it to punish me."
What's the next question? Would you like to pay more in taxes and you have no say on how it gets spent?
It looks like privacy has become nearly impossible. Then we need to get control over our data and how it is being used.
My ray of hope: an air-gapped beefy desktop that runs generative text and image models, plus a large disk filled with cached content. You can do anything in total privacy as long as it doesn't connect outside.
I mean, if we take your question seriously, perhaps up to 34% of those surveyed...
>66% of respondents don’t approve of internet providers monitoring their digital communication for suspicious content
Sure, some of them are authoritarians who simply want unchecked power, but it’s too cynical to assume that this holds for most.
Many more are old, well-meaning people who are at least slightly afraid of computers and want to help Protect The Children. Showing them that, in fact, The Children themselves aren’t on board with this seems like a decent play to me.
They do.
> Many more are old, well-meaning people who are at least slightly afraid of computers
They are literally of the generation that invented computing and the internet.
> The Children themselves aren’t on board with this seems like a decent play to me.
Children are children, they don't know what they want and what they are doing.
They are giving away tons of their personal data, pictures (including very private ones), messages (including very private ones), personal preferences (including very private ones, like political preferences, sexual preferences etc.) to TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and most of all Google and Apple, but yeah, the problem is the people elected to vote on some legislation that might create mild annoyances to the richest corporations history has ever seen.
It's always fascinating to me how what people say is important to them doesn't necessarily inform who they vote for, or how politicians may simply ignore the will of the people. Unfortunately, for too many people it seems like politics is based purely on vibes.
Can we please stop beating about the bush? Surveillance, whether with commercial or political motives is a critical issue. Society is malfunctioning "at scale" while a sort of sheepish stalemate has taken hold. People are uninformed. Vested interests would rather keep it this way. These are grave risks and they must be taken seriously / discussed with the outmost transparency, objectivity and urgency.
I have been thinking/reading about this a lot in the past months (to the detriment of my mental health, unfortunately), and it seems like even non-FLOSS operating systems are somewhat invasive when it comes to privacy, let alone the software you run on them.
I think FOSS means there is more transparency about what is going on, which is very important but not the whole story.
The issue is when there is no more private type of media left.
Every now and then some group of people end up making a democracy, but most don't put as many power-checks up as the US did when it was created (3 different branches) so must only last about one generation.
America's time is coming to an end. Crowds just aren't able to combat propaganda and other tactics from focused groups.
Damn, I think you made my day
https://apnews.com/article/france-retirement-age-strike-prot...
Good luck.
I'd take that as a mix of internalized propaganda (democracy is Da Best, therefore the dystopia must be the opposite - a psycho dictator at the top), mass-market appeal (most people seem to like basic character stories best, therefore let's' do a character-focused good vs evil story) and tendency to follow established tropes.
And if you feel that fiction "has already pinned down the future", I feel like I should warn about generalizing from fictional evidence, but I guess at this volume it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Everyone dreading but also expecting a dystopia is a sure way to walk straight into one.
> America's time is coming to an end. Crowds just aren't able to combat propaganda and other tactics from focused groups.
Could this be a maintenance issue? Most citizens - in the US or elsewhere - are just users of democracy, understanding it even worse than they understand phones and computers. It's not an easy system to grok - it's unstable on its own, and requires feedback control to function long-term. Most people never learn a good mental framework to understand such concepts - so perhaps putting more effort into teaching people not just history and political sciences, but actual control theory (or some handwavy simplification) would enable more people to both appreciate the system and help resist its subversion?
I'd like to think it would, but then the last few years have dispelled the illusion I had, that broad knowledge, proficiency with complex mental models, and good epistemic hygiene, are qualities that make people less likely to spew obvious bullshit in favor of their preferred political ideology. I suppose you can't easily teach people to treat intellectual honesty as a virtue.
It only takes a few hundred/thousand people in key places in a government to lower their standards or get scared about something and they can easily drag/persuade the entire country to come with them.
The real question is how to keep the checks and balances strong and stable instead of having them erode over time, as has been happening e.g. in the US.
We need a system that can consistently inhibit a privacy-eroding response to a 9/11-type event.
This group isn't static; people who were 13-17 years old when Facebook became popular are not the same ones who are 13-17 years old and using TikTok today. I'm not saying that hurts your argument, but it feels a little misleading to phrase it in a way that sounds like the group of people who flocked to Facebook back in the day are the same ones flocking to TikTok now. The teens who flocked to Facebook when it was new and popular with teens are now in their 20s and 30s; some of them might even be in government by now.
+1
You're being absurdly reductionist, because you're overloading the term 'privacy', which has two very distinct meanings, here, each of which are hit by three different threat vectors.
The two meanings are:
1. Control over which information you actively communicate about yourself, and to whom - private correspondence, photographs, social media posts, tweets, etc. Are you actively peacocking your social life to your friends, and to extension, the world? [1]
2. Control over which information is passively gathered around you - tracking cookies, records made about you, cell location data, etc.
The three threat vectors are:
1. Your peers, relatives, stalking strangers, boss, etc.
2. Some random company that wants to market to you.
3. Your domestic (and very, very, very rarely, a foreign) government. Police, spies, etc.
There's a different set of rules, social norms, expectations, and laws, and expected benefit/harm outcomes around each of the six combinations in this matrix. There's a little bit of overlap between them (For example, #3 subpoenaing data gathered in #2 and #1), but it's silly to lump all of them together wholesale.
[1] Everyone's doing it, if you're not doing it to some extent or other[2], most peer groups will socially ostracize you to some degree.
[2] You can control the extent to which you are doing so.