EU's concealment of secret 'expert list' on CSAM regulation is maladministration
iccl.ie
iccl.ie
Obviously it is wrong to create child porn intentionally. But that's already illegal and people who do this are laughably bad at ITSEC. Like seriously, read the stories of CSAM making "studios" who got caught. Either law enforcement is so bad that any remotely shrewd criminal defeats them, either the criminals are just not all that technically savvy. Either way, the tools to catch actual child molesters are effective and adequate.
On car forums, you're cool if you're the first to do a particular mod. In pedo communities, I'd expect you to be "cool" if you violate a new, hitherto-unseen kid, or violate one in a new and creative way.
>But that's already illegal and people who do this are laughably bad at ITSEC. Like seriously, read the stories of CSAM making "studios" who got caught.
Separately, this doesn't follow. Catching criminals with laughably bad OPSEC doesn't exclude the existence of successful criminals with very good OPSEC.
I have doubts, that new measures will move the needle much.
Some studies have shown that availability of animated CSAM reduced recidivism among child molesters. That we treat these two categories of CSAM the same, along with the assumption that it encourages more harm, are some of those conversations that need to happen.
I am aware of the purported benefits of decriminalizing certain kinds of CSAM, but utilitarian arguments are suspiciously silent on the subject of costs.
Have you thought of any dangers in this approach, and how they can be avoided?
I mean this in the gentlest way possible. I'm really trying to think this through, and would appreciate your input.
I suppose that the government needs to do the actual research first, and only then introduce new surveillance measures and prohibitions, not vice versa.
So let's start by enumerating the cost of cartoons and comics depicting CSA (e.g. some hentai, which is usually ambiguous about age). Other than the cost of production and distribution which is the same as any other form of comics, I'm drawing a blank here.
The reason they're suspiciously silent is because there is little to no evidence for the existence of such costs. The harms of CSAM with real children is clear as the victim is on camera, but who is victimized by animated CSAM? The allegation is that exposure to porn encourages deviant thoughts that eventually culminate in molestation. This is contradicted by lots of sex research in ordinary people and porn, and the small studies of child molesters suggests that it reduces recidivism too, like I said.
So the situation we're in is that the government has banned something with little to no evidence of actual harm. It's the obscenity laws against porn all over again. Shouldn't the government ideally have to demonstrate actual harm before regulating behaviours?
I understand the impulse to the precautionary principle, but it doesn't seem warranted here.
Surely you can imagine the harm of sharing the video of someone's rape? Don't you think we should try to avoid this for the sake of those who have already suffered?
Clearly you didn't read my comment very carefully:
> The harms of CSAM with real children is clear as the victim is on camera, but who is victimized by animated CSAM?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_child_por...
Basically, the evidence is very weak for the association between CSM and molestation.
I wish I could find the study that was actually interventionist. Couldn't find it after a quick search and don't have time for a deep dive into this stuff again.
Simple posession of videos of rape and murder is not illegal(in most places) and yet it would be hard to imagine anyone making an argument that it should be illegal because someone might get internet fame for producing them. Or rather - we know that people produce this kind of thing "on order" and we still don't think that banning the posession of this material is going to stop the actual crimes behind them being commited. Why is this any different?
You've pointed out exactly the kind of incoherences in law that I was hoping to bring to mind. Agreed, on the surface there is little difference between possession of snuff vs CSAM. I'm not sure what to do with that observation, though, because I have trouble assessing:
1. Is surface-level analysis is correct? Or is there something bigger at play?
2. What is the appropriate level of punishment vs rehabilitation?
To the first question, there are obvious differences between child abuse and murder, but I can't think of an example in which one of those differences would also lead to a different conclusion about the nature of the recording. Similarly, I don't think the act of recording the crime is significantly changed by any of the differences between child abuse and murder.
With that in mind, what do we do? Do we consider video-taping murder as bad as video-taping child abuse? My own gut-check reveals that I rationally think murder is worse than rape, but then again, rape somehow seems more taboo. If I consider the taboo element, I reach the opposite conclusion: that rape is worse than murder. Adding in the "child" element, I observe a main effect of making everything worse, but the interaction of "rape" getting disproportionately worse than "murder".
Again, this is just me, but I would like to understand where these conflicting feelings come from. My sense is that rape triggers us on a symbolic level... something about Man betraying Woman. I'm old-fashioned enough to think archetypes matter, so I'd like to get a bead on this before formulating any policy opinions.
Instead of debating smokescreens and planted arguments, we should be forcing the conversation to stay on the topic of fundamental privacy and avoid the entire gamut of CSAM/piracy/terrorism arguments typically employed.
I still don't agree with these laws, though. The good outweighs the bad.
Besides, I suspect that AI CSAM will probably be more interesting and more satisfying in the future to those that desire it, and that creates a whole separate conversation.
That's because you're reading about the dumb CP producers that got caught.... who by definition messed up with their ITSEC or in some other way.
Isn't this probably the biggest source of revenue for criminals? Money for bytes, which creates more incentives to commit more crimes?
(1) Removing the buyers has different macroscopic effects from imprisoning the producers. In a world where private circulation is legal but production is not, the expected result is less production (great!), high prices and incentives for the remaining content (uh-oh), and more creative, intelligent, risk-taking, impoverished (whatever differences make taking the new risks worth it) producers. That long tail is had to crack down on because the high incentives will almost certainly lure in some unsavory individuals. It's a lot like the global ivory trade.
(2) The truth of the following matter is murky to me (and as I understand it, to experts as well; I'd love for somebody else to chime in), but there's an argument that exposure to material at best doesn't help the addiction and is likely to make it worse. CSAM is a bit hard to study, but to the extent that it's comparable to other vices, proxies for murder and rape (movies, games, ...) there's some body of evidence that the substitute behaviors strengthen the addiction and make actual offenses more likely, rather than satiating a need and making real-world offenses less frequent (this is a bit different from the video_games->violence argument because the sample is different and small enough that you wouldn't have necessarily expected that deviant behavior to show up in macro-level stats for a society-wide study).
It's probably worth debating that sort of thing to ensure we're actually going to do some good in the world, but IMO it's a lot more damning that the majority of tech-related CSAM laws are unlikely to help in the manner described, are prone to increasing CSAM issues massively in their secondary effects, have significant other negative collateral, and appear only to be introduced as a Trojan horse for less savory motives. Even if stopping distribution is worthwhile (I think it probably is), the proposed laws are at best totally worthless for the stated goals.
It shows what an absolute bureaucratic mess it all is.
You make it sound like that's a positive achievement.
There are "Limits To Growth" [0]
Also, while the population growth itself may not be a positive achievement directly, it's kind of necessary for all the scientific, technological and cultural achievements. Unless you don't see those as positive either - in which case I don't think there's anything left to discuss.
This is just natural selection in action: only people who are good at slotting into bureaucracy and being well-behaved cogs in the wheel will thrive in this environment, and other types of humans will die out. This exact same argument suggests we should not tolerate indigenous people who live separate from civilization. Adapt or die right? But this conclusion is typically quite abhorrent to the same type of people who advocate for your position. Can't have it both ways.
This runs into problems for global matters (global climate change and pollution) and conflicts with an overriding belief in a global morality (depending on how much you are willing to entertain the idea that your idea of morality isn't the "correct" one), but some compromise variation of this idea is certainly self-consistent.
> At the same time I can advocate for letting groups of people control their territory and form states that aren't liberal democracies, since that's yet another form of allowing for dissenting views.
What if they want to home school all of their children, do they have to abide by some kind education standard? The bureaucracy will come for you for any choice it finds unpalatable.
I don't see a way to reconcile these without a lot of special pleading. In the end, a form of natural selection will dominate and only the type of people who can fit well into the most optimal bureaucracies will thrive. Maintaining indigenous rights and the rights of "uncivilized" humans will be simply a curiosity, like how we keep animals in a zoo, rather than some coherent recognition of an inherent right to exist and live apart.
I'm not taking a particular side on this question here, I used to be all pro-civilization, science, research and expansion into space, etc. in the Star Trek sense, but I've increasingly recognized the natural selection aspects of this and the apparently inherent incompatibility with liberty.
Oh, that. I too have a gnawing feeling that progress of technology and civilization is fundamentally incompatible with individual autonomy. At the very least, because to the extent new advancement put more of potentially destructive power in the hands of individuals, the more control the civilization needs over said individuals, in order to protect itself from any of such individuals going rogue and using their power destructively. That's one thought, I have couple more like this, and they all add up to "progress and civilization, or personal autonomy, pick one".
There's an implicit assumption here that people could not be educated or conditioned to tolerate such risks so they could have their liberty, and therefore stricter oversight will always occur. That might be true, but it wasn't always true, particularly in the US, so we should acknowledge this possibility.
These days this conflict is seen in the gun control issue: one side is OK with higher death rate from guns to enjoy those liberties, and the other wants a more authoritarian system for more safety.
Tolerance for such risk would change how society is structured somewhat too. Probably less concentrated populations, and more independent and local governance to mitigate the possibility of massive loss of life. Centralization has efficiency advantages though, but with the internet maybe that isn't as much of a concern anymore. I don't see us moving in that direction, but it might be a viable possibility.
It would require that slotting into bureaucracy increases the ability and opportunity to procreate for the individual over not slotting into bureaucracy. I doubt that is the case. Strong adherence to a bureaucratic lifestyle significantly reduces the number of offsprings compared to a more chaotic way of living.
They tracked it. That's all. I see no convincing argument that advanced civilisations occur only in a pool of enormous labour surplus.
The utilitarian in me, and the compassionate human, prefers a world that takes 50,000 years to reach a sustainable, comfortable technological society with a smaller population, than one that grows in 5,000 years to far beyond it's capacity, overproducing consumerist junk, poisoning its planet and seeing billions dying in wars and famines so that a few of us can bow down before the altar of "growth",
Maybe the fact that we have to kill so many of our own kind in order for one percent to live in luxury and pat themselves on the back about "achievements" means we're not really as smart as we think we are as a species?
Elon Musk is the opposite of a huge bureaucracy.
Your typical country government is already too much but somehow they get away with it with a pinch of nationalism and tribe mentality, the EU is so over board that I think people will actually rebel / or people with a brain will migrate away eventually.
The EU has apparently enough checks and balances that it gets caught when there is an attempt like this. My national government does have them as well, but they are mostly not being acted upon even when they clearly detect misbehavior.
I'm reminded of the Trans-Pacific Partnership ("TPP") from ~8 years ago. Very few people were even allowed to see the text of the treat [1] yet the people's represntatives had to ratify this when their own constituents weren't allowed to see it? Wikileaks and others leaked drafts and it was as bad as people thought it was going to be.
Defenders argue that trade negotiations need to happen in secret so as to not worsen our negotiating position. This really translates to "we don't want to afford the public the opportunity to oppose it". The EU now is finding some BS rationale for operating in the shadows.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/14/40667...
Trusting that NCMEC can't be compromised is a nonstarter. I would trust a system where Chinese, Russian, American, British, etc police agreed that the database only includes CSAM.
Does this meet your threshold?
The strict criteria ensure that the Baseline list refers only to images and videos which would be considered as illegal in any country.”
INTERPOL has a very large membership, including Russia and China. The baseline list is reviewed so only media that is illegal in every country INTERPOL operates in is included.
I’m not sure how a veto system as you’re suggesting would work practically, but this might be the closest thing.
I personally think Baseline is a good pragmatic approach. It includes only known media, where they retain the originals for sense checking, and only includes things judged to be CSAM by trained experts. It’s probably the lightest touch possible solution that is still somewhat effective.
CSAM doesn't need to be added to the database in real-time. It can be done quarterly, giving each national agency time to deliberate on the content.
Is it that Baseline seems overly bureaucratic and will be ineffective, or that people should not support any CSAM lists at all?
Everything else is quite explicitly window dressing.
This isn't going to unite international rivals against it any more than an asteroid hurtling toward the planet. Only the western world gives a shit about it, which means it's easily weaponized by anybody outside of it.
Rather than backdooring every device on the planet, a more practical solution would be to just take away kids' phones and chain them to the radiator. To protect the children from CSAM, lock them up.
We don't like to admit it but face the facts: children are property as far as the State is concerned. Same as any other asset, livestock and firearms, they can be "taken" away from you and "given" to others for dividends (which, when you think about it, describes the act of trafficking itself).
You don't protect your home by unlocking everyone else's. That sort of "solution" makes you an actual menace to society.
Absolutely. Just the first part, seriously. No need for chains and radiators. Let's ban kids under 16 from access to phones and the open Internet. It would MASSIVELY improve just about everything about childhood and mental health of the young.
There are plenty of technologies emerging with the density of memory and GPT type compression (that's what neural networks really do... compression) to facilitate "curated education in a box", and small network (family and friends) communication.
Honestly it'd make the internet a lot better for adults too.
The Louvre doesn't respond to people stealing paintings by disabling all the security cameras. Prisons don't protect the public by being free-range. Nuclear disarmament is too complex to go into here, but hypocrisy abounds. Barring that one incident, the Mint doesn't protect the money supply by storing it in the middle of a Walmart parking lot (predictably, it got stolen).
Every time we seek to secure anything, we make the coveted object more inaccessible to pursuers. That's how Protection works.
Anyone telling you lowering your guard and becoming vulnerable will somehow increase anyone's safety is one distraction away from slipping a roofie into your drink. It's the sort of gaslighting one expects from a pervert or voyeur.
It would make it very difficult to produce new CSAM if you eliminate the channels over which children are discreetly coerced into running away or producing it themselves.
Nonetheless I agree the utility that children get from access to the mainstream "Five Giant Enshitified Websites" doesn't really surmount the damage done. The main harm, in my opinion, is simply to general mental health and wellbeing. So that just adds to the case for an age restriction for smartphones. If that reduces potential contact with nonces then all-good, but the reality is that child abuse happens by people IRL, usually trusted family or neighbours.
Maybe the tide is turning and we're "getting there", and that's why I defended and supported many parts of the UK Online Safety Bill - even though other parts of it are trash. However this focus on CSAM to push unworkable restrictions is the usual dishonest politics and posturing.
We have more general problems with minors and the Internet, and most of them are "live rail" issues the media and politicians won't touch.
> 26. Given the Commission’s failure to identify the list of experts despite the complainant’s clear interest in it, the Commission should register this now as a new request for public access to documents and handle it in accordance with Regulation 1049/2001.
I know the ombudsman doesn't really have power and can only provide recommendations but surely "and the people who initially denied the request should be fined/fired/imprisoned" or some such language would have been OK to add? Seems like 'we can ignore the law until someone jumps over the substantial hurdles to complain about us ignoring the law and then we can follow the law' is not good for democracy.
the exact same twisted logic that we use in this crusade surely it would apply to videos of people getting killed not just raped right?
or is there a unique puritanical weirdness that allows CSAM to get a pass to where states should be violating all of our devices
What is more disturbing is that there are very few European institutions and companies on this list.
If the goal of your company is to promote and get a wiretap on every single device and messenger app, IN SECRET, you should be concerned about your public image. I also suggest you should be also concerned human rights and your personal moral compass.
Time to drag out these bastards to the light.
What is going on here is the EU doesn't want to look like it consulted bastards and is coming up with arbitrary reasons to hide that.
For example, one might imagine that eIDAS 2 isn’t backed by a consortium of would-be spies but is more likely backed by a small consortium of crappy CAs that are sick of being forced to comply with CA/B Forum rules and want regulation to override the rules.
(The CA/B rules are very specific and extremely aggressively enforced. It’s not like the GDPR where you can apparently get away with messing around for quite a while. Multiple fairly large companies have had their CA operations effectively shut down by the CA/B Forum for noncompliance.)
A 1984-like law for wiretraping every citizen looking for double-plus-ungood speech is way too evil to come from a motivation of selling more wiretraps.
The people pushing it are societal vandals. That kind of thing should be persecuted as treason. You don't do treason just to increase your workplace bottom line, it's absurd.
Did you not hear about the Russian tanks that fell apart on their way to Ukraine because Russian soldiers had been looting parts of them to sell for vodka?
Most treason isn't called out with a big neon sign and a confirm dialog reminding the actor that they're committing treason. From the inside, most treason just feels like workplace fraud/embezzlement, or like laziness, or like "office politicking" where your office happens to be "the state legislature." It's almost always just petty crime, that happens to have big consequences.
We're used to ignoring the pop-ups because of the steady escalation and increasing exhaustion. We're being frog boiled.
Those soldiers selling tank parks for vodka weren't committing treason, they were corruptly selling military parts (to presumably NOT the enemy) to get drunk. Which is pretty terrible, and would likely get you shot or imprisoned in most armies. But isn't treason.
Aiding a known spy of the enemy? Yes. Sending military supplies to the enemy? Yes. Working on behalf of the enemy (knowingly?) Yes, maybe. Depends on what you do.
That might be Espionage, or being an unregistered agent of a foreign power. Both with serious penalties on their own.
I'm pretty sure intentional friendly fire is treason (or am I wrong?) You're "doing the enemy's job."
This is just that, without it happening during a battle, and without there being soldiers in the tank.
It’s theft. In the military. To get drunk.
It’s far too short sighted and self serving to intentionally help the enemy, it’s just plain criminality. Not treason. Likely to still get one shot or sent to the Gulag of course. But no one sane is writing ‘treason’ on any of the paperwork.
Or is it treason if a woman refuses to have a child because she is ‘sabotaging the future war effort’? Or a car thief who steals a truck, because that truck ‘could be used to transport supplies’?
And where did this ‘intentional friendly fire’ come from?
The crime of treason doesn't involve/imply a mens rea of being an insurrectionist / working toward an enemy nation's goals. It instead implies a much more limited mens rea: that you knew that what you're doing would help an enemy nation win a war against your nation, and you did it anyway.
> Or is it treason if a woman refuses to have a child because she is ‘sabotaging the future war effort’? Or a car thief who steals a truck, because that truck ‘could be used to transport supplies’?
No, because (among other reasons) in both of those cases, those are hypothetical gains lost, rather than concrete losses realized. The military didn't already own the child, or the truck.
If you steal a truck that's actually transporting supplies to the front — and thereby also steal the supplies — then yes, that is treason!
And, slightly more niche — if this is a monarchy, and the child would become king, and the mother bears the child but then kills it — then yes, that's treason too. At the moment that the child becomes an important state asset, killing them becomes a treasonous act.
Though, focusing on the truck, another reason this could be "not treason", is that a civilian stealing a random truck (presumably not a military-painted supply truck) isn't aware that it's a military asset.
Likewise, if someone hears a classified secret and repeats it, that's usually not considered treason.
In both cases, that's because civilians haven't been told that this truck, or that information, is important to the state. To them, it's just a truck, it's just gossip, etc. So they're just punished for whatever common-law crime they committed, if any.
But soldiers are told these things. They know that the truck is carrying supplies; they know that the info is classified. And so when they steal the truck/leak the info anyway, that's considered a betrayal of their country: treason.
People are so much more venal than we give them credit for.
Why do people steal of defraud? The potential individual enrichment is higher. Why engage in corrupt short-termerisms like accepting bribes? individual enrichment.
This is all the result of "greed is good" ^1 and its not sustainable.
1: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/greed-i...
[0]An AGI-led command economy is certainly interesting though.
If anything, I'd say the "conspiracy" — or at least, the tacit collusion — is on the other side of this battle.
What few demographic studies we've done on the prevalence of pedophilia, say that something like 10% of men express some level of attraction toward children. (With almost none of them ever acting on this attraction, or mentioning it to anyone other than a psychiatrist.)
So potentially 10% of men everywhere — scattered all throughout industry and government — have clear motivation to push back against the creation of laws that would see their proclivities discovered and persecuted.
Of course, such people wouldn't out themselves by just defending the "rights of pedophiles" in any direct way. But they would act on any opportunity to ensure that mechanisms for "complete privacy" exist; and they would also stand behind others when they see them doing the same; and they would also learn all the rhetoric used by privacy advocates, and use it.
(Yes, there are other people on the side of "no wiretaps" besides pedophiles. I'm not saying "we can ignore the people against wiretaps because they're all just pedophiles anyway." What I'm saying is more that, insofar as "10% of men" is an accurate measure, that's a big implicit voting interest bloc! Probably one larger than all the world's egalitarian "privacy advocates" put together! And so there has always — and will always — be this group with their thumb on the scale, tipping any democratic action in society away from panopticons, for that group's own protection.)
Edit: typo
You know the EU digital regulator should have been an US citizen from Big Tech...
Now that lobbiests have more effectively gotten their teeth into the parliament, I am honestly pessimistic about EU governance.
The specific reason why policy laundering is possible is because international organizations are only accountable to their member states and not citizens. Making them accountable to citizens means getting rid of those member state vetos and having direct elected Commissioners instead - i.e. moving closer to a federal model of Europe.
In America, we used to appoint Senators rather than electing them, as a vestige of pre-federal America where states were supposed to actually be co-sovereigns. The result was that - once Americans figured out how to use their political power effectively - every state gubernatorial race became a proxy vote for Senate anyway. I suspect we need something like this to happen in the EU, where politicians precommit to specific Commissioner appointments, until this becomes enough of a problem that the EU decides to make Commissioners elected.
[0] And, more generally, all EU citizens
Have we already forgotten that a fair few countries rejected the EU constitution by referendum, only to have it shoved down their throats? Have we forgotten that Europe managed to produce some of the most brutal totalitarian states, and this within living memory? Are we really going to write this off as mere "maladministration"? Have we learned nothing?
I can already hear the objections. "But omginternets, this time the government is enforcing the right ideas!"
We're going to end up proving the Americans right. Let that sink in.
I think many Americans don't realize what the EU's history actually is. Juncker's honoring of Marx wasn't unexpected. The original proposal for the EU was made by communists imprisoned on an island during WW2. The Ventotene Manifesto specifically called for a socialist federation [2]. Spinelli devoted his life to the construction of the EU and spent 6 years as a member of the Commission, during which time he was actually a member of the Italian Communist Party! There is a major building in Brussels named after him, in his honor.
This attitude can be seen in the many disturbing quotes from major EU figures, like these from [3].
Juncker:
- "When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
- "We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided we continue step by step until there is no turning back."
- "Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
Vivian Reding (a VP of the Commission)
- "We must now embark on the road to a United States of Europe."
- "When people ask politicians today “What will become of Europe?” or “Where is European integration heading?”, we usually give an evasive answer. “We don’t want a super state” that is generally the first thing we say. I must admit that I have in the past often resorted to this kind of thing myself.
Helmut Kohl, former German Chancellor
- “The process of Union is like the Rhine flowing into the sea. Anyone who stands in its way is crushed”
Guy Verhofstadt, MEP chosen to represent the EP in Brexit negotiations
- “The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It’s a world order that is based on empires.”
Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Belgian PM and VP of the EU Convention
- "More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes."
Raymond Barre, former French PM
- "I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account."
etc etc.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-chief-defends-marx-controv...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventotene_Manifesto
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/OutCampaign/comments/36ofm0/quotes_...
Please do not see "Marxists" everywhere, where it's not solely about unregulated capitalism. In actuality, the EU has been criticised quite a bit in the past for being the very spearhead of deregulation and denationalisation in Europe (compare the Maastricht agreement), which is probably not that Marxist, at all.
You may also check your "Marxists":
- Jean-Claude Junckers: Christian Social People's Party
- Vivian Reding: Christian Social People's Party
- Helmut Kohl: Christian Social People's Party (CDU)
- Guy Verhofstadt: Liberal Democrat (moved from neoliberalism more closely to centrisism)
- Jean-Luc Dehaene: Christian Social People's Party
- Raymond Barre: UDF (center right policies)
These are all conservatives, mostly Christian conservatives!
PS, regarding Spinelli: The PCI was actually a mix of communists and social-democrats, was a prominent proponent of Eurocommunism, which opposed the USSR, and Italy's second strongest party after WWII. Arguably, they were the only ones not in bed with mafiotic structures and/or Gladio-style stay-behind organisations. Not every person adhering to Marxist theory is automatically bad and evil. Most are actually idealists (somewhat at odds with their materialist viewpoints).
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/ventotene-manifesto-and-futu...
The Manifesto spread like wildfire through all the circles of the European resistance. This resulted in the founding of the movements for a European federation in several countries, the decisive Hague Congress of 1948. It resulted ultimately in the Schuman Declaration of 1950, which proposed the European Coal and Steel Community, the first step on our integration process, based on the supranational principle. Later on, in a career that included being Commissioner and Member of the European Parliament, Spinelli promoted the Treaty of the European Union of 1984, which was approved by the European Parliament. Originally rejected by the Council, it became a major influence in the writing of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that launched the monetary union and created the foreign and security pillar, of intergovernmental nature.
The EU was founded by communists, there's no real way around it.
Still, you are totally right that the EU is not specifically Marxist today, even though it has its origins in that world. But that doesn't mean there's no problem. Marxism is just one turn of the wheel, an iteration of the same underlying ideology that constantly shapeshifts whilst retaining its basic idealistic core. By the end of the 20th century Marxist economics was discredited. The working classes failed to rise up and revolt against their capitalist masters, turning out to be actually quite conservative and OK with capitalism. The places where "professional revolutionaries" did it for them trashed their economies and wrecked their societies.
So no longer would people who shared Marx's basic intuitions focus their energies on organizing the working classes. They adopted standard capitalist orthodoxy instead, which is why the old left tend to describe the EU as "neoliberal". And they are indeed to some extent New Liberals economically, albeit their love for capitalism is half-hearted at best. They are reluctant converts. But the same underlying intuitions about human nature didn't go away. The principles that there are big gaps between the best and worst people, that society should be united under a dictatorship of the best people, and that it's OK to bend or break the rules to get that outcome, well, unfortunately these ideas somehow did not get discredited.
And so the people who would once have been Marxists shed the idea of fully planned economies and violent revolution, replacing it with a new form of subtle diplomatic revolution. The outcomes would be the same: people are still forced into a trans-national dictatorship of "professional revolutionaries" against their will, but now the mechanisms have altered. The mechanism would be a steady accumulation of international treaties erasing differences between nations, exploiting a loophole in many countries constitutions that allows governments to sign treaties without needing the consent of representatives, and by linking all those apparently separate treaties via carefully disguised "guillotine clauses" in which an attempt to back out of one causes the immediate revocation of all of them.
This focus on subterfuge is why so many quotes from EU elites are on the theme of backroom dealings, misleading the public about what they're doing, hiding things from the public, ensuring countries can't back out when it's too late and so on. It's why the EU has a culture of intense secrecy about everything, reflected in the article this thread is about, but it's not unique to CSAM expert lists. The way von der Leyen was selected is a secret, even the way EU law is made is itself a secret:
https://euobserver.com/eu-political/136630
And often even things that are stated publicly are manipulative propaganda, which is why HN has so many posters convinced of things that aren't true, like the supposedly democratic nature of how the Commission is appointed (not true, Juncker has said in the past he vetoed any Commissioner he didn't like, which is not how it's supposed to work and not how people usually claim it works).
So the EU is fundamentally still engaged in the same old tricks. It is in some sense progress that they do it via the pen now and not the sword, but that's relatively small consolation given that the desired end state is so similar.
Moreover, while John Stuart Mill described some kind of a market place inside factories, the advent of management soon brought the concentration of all manufacturing knowledge in a central representation, where it was dismantled, reassembled and redistributed to the various work stations. As compared to Mill's description, a Fordist factory already represents a planned production process. The idea of extending this beyond individual factories (and at the same time gaining some control over the antagonistic forces that dominated the economy) was somewhat natural and not that revolutionary as we may think. Another root may be the central planning and commissioning of roads, bridges and railways – and thus of economic development along those routes. It is not a coincidence that Charles Joseph Minard (who was quite in alignment to the Second Empire), who's famous charts already remind of the kind of knowledge required for a planned economy, had been General Inspector of Roads and Bridges in France.
(Meaning, while soviet planned economy was radical, it was by no means alien to the general development of economy, it was rather an extension of what we would now call conservative policies. The very idea of policy (as in "Policey" as a means of increasing the efficiency of a national body by general directives), is a conservative one. Therefore, it shouldn't come to much surprise that we find commonalities in both of them. Just because we find an elaborate state of planning in, say, a US manufacturing process, it doesn't mean that this is Marxist, nor does it mean that the EU is a Marxist conspiracy.)
Europe's experiences with untethered capitalism in the 19th century had been generally problematic, and it had waddled from the great crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s directly into the war, now facing enormous efforts in reconstruction and redevelopment. The idea of doing better, this time, wasn't totally unconceivable. Especially, since European powers were also facing a significant loss of power and influence in general, and thus also limited economic prospects. (Even the first program of the German conservative party, after the war, declared untethered capitalism and Marxist economy as failed in equal ways, giving rise to what became the predominant model, social market economy, which met with analog concepts popular among social-democrats.)
Regarding Greece, mind that Greece debt was totally covered by German restitution obligations, which is also why banks (among them prominently German banks) rushed to propose credits to Greece, since this was backed by the German economy, supposedly a safe bet. It was only when Germany allowed itself a unilateral haircut that this became problematic. (Also compare the London Agreement on German External Debts, where the payment part has been factually canceled in favour of Germany. As an effect of this, while, e.g., the UK was repaying lend-lease debts right into the 21st century, significantly hampering its economy, Germany came out this without any war-related obligations, even – compare the Greece pension treasuries – taking ultimate possession over some of the war-time "acquisitions", while enjoying recronstruction aids at quite a scale. There's a major imbalance in this.) Moreover, the common currency provides more developed industries access to poorer markets on equal footing, thus providing the means for a transfer from the poorer, mostly Southern economies to the richer, Northern ones. Any attempt at a common control of bond rates just mitigates the effects of the common currency for those countries. (Opposing this is much like wanting to eat the cake and still have it, which isn't prone to work out well.)
Which makes it ironically the most corrupt and undemocratic part of the EU, despite being literally made of people elected through national elections. People who say member states are more democratic than the EU tend to have a problem with this one.
This is never a talking point because it's so detached from normal people life and it's actionable - it's not a good empty promise they can taper cities with and then never fulfill.
The ideal empty promise is something that will take more than 5y to evaluate and people care about.
https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-ge...
Nope.
Commissioners are appointed by the member governments. Each government has an allocation of commissioners to appoint. They are usually failed politicians of the party of government (all political careers end in failure). They have to be signed off by the EU parliament (I think), but nobody in Europe knows the background of every political has-been in other EU countries.
The catch, they can only approve (or not approve) them as a group. Usually the parliament will indicate which nominated members they find unacceptable and those respective countries nominate new candidates.
Reference: https://www.europeactive.eu/news/european-parliament-gearing...
Arguably this is more democratic than how we appoint government ministers in Germany. The chancellor gets elected by parliament and then appoints (and fires) ministers on their own authority without any check by parliament.
OK, that's what I thought, but I had doubts, because I read something contrary recently. Thanks for clarifying.
Can German chancellors appoint anyone they like as ministers, or do they have to appoint someone who has been elected to the Bundestag? Because commissioners are not elected.
So, as I recall, there's been exactly one instance in which the EU Parliament has rejected all the Commissioners; they sacked the lot, because it was evident that they were mostly corrupt. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
They can appoint anyone to ver the age of 18 with German citizenship. It‘s common that several ministers are not members of the Bundestag.
In fact, the chancellor doesn‘t even have to be a member of the Bundestag. Though he obviously gets elected by the whole parliament.
I don't think that's right, is it? Apart from anything else, the Council of Ministers isn't a fixed group of people; if the meeting is about fisheries, then it's the fisheries ministers from the member governments, and so on. Each meeting of the Council of Ministers is a different group of people. And anyway, they can't select anyone they like, because each member country gets an allocation of commissioners (one or two, I think).
I believe there are plans afoot to remove that rule, so that countries like Liechtenstein no longer get one commissioner. About time too.
The President is in theory selected by the Council (leaders of the member states), but in practice the whole process is secret so nobody knows how it happens. Certainly the Commission often ends up with extremely dubious Presidents where nobody can explain on what merits they gained that position.
And then the selection of both President and Commissioners is supposed to be ratified by the Parliament but last time they were given a vote with a single option on it. You could either support vdL or abstain. And it's not a real Parliament anyway so nobody with any political ambition actually runs for it, it's a joke chamber made up of yes-men and people who think their countries should leave the EU entirely. Even Juncker didn't take it seriously.
So nothing about the Commission relies on elections.
In the EU, most countries don't even have a government party, because most governments are coalitions, which may not have even existed before the elections.
So you don't even get to vote for the party of government, nor its leader. It's all very indirect.
It's like democracy except so indirect that it's total shit.
Can't trust the people to actually choose who to put in charge - have to leave that decision to the leaders selected by the other leaders who were voted by the other leaders.
You've had it with the EU bureaucrats? What a shame, CSAM has been detected on your phone. Prepare to be apprehended.
I can't think of a single instance in which a technocracy has produced a good outcome.
The people didn't want the EU to reform.
Uhh... what?
Firstly, it was rejected by more than just the French and the Dutch. Secondly, the reason it was rejected is precisely because, for lack of democratic process, it structurally favors this kind of authoritarian opacity.
The proposed constitution doesn't even begin to fix this; it is instead the very cause.
The term had me confused at first because I though it consisted of evidence of child sexual abuse, including things like medical records showing traces of abuse. But no, it is just child porn, stuff that gets pedophiles excited, which may include stuff where no real child abuse has taken place (ex: lolicon).
Consider a scenario:
- you use whatsapp, end-to-end encrypted by an USA company
- someone, perhaps a random stranger, sends you an image in which there is a criticism to a ruling party in Dabujistan
- your whatsapp has turned on the feature to save images on your phone
- you happen to transfer via Dabujistan
With CSAM tech, and fingerprints managed by the governments, you might be subject to jail.
Not it's not. It's about "Why the fuck should I be under constant surveillance?"
Our computers are practically brain extensions at this point. I don't want anyone wiretapping my thoughts or coming close to it by wiretapping my private conversations with my family. Fuck off.
No. It's not appropriate.
Whether you or I consider that "real" CSAM, is moot. What matters is that more and more girls are going to be deepfaked into content they didn't consent to (and in fact can't consent to due to their age.
The proliferation of that content will lead to new laws driven by parents and politicians eager to "think of the children". However impractical, I could see image generators being treated like drugs or firearms and being highly restricted or banned.
It's not possible to detect CSAM without breaking the security model of the system for everyone, if the system can make any kind of report of detected content to an outside entity. If the system scans messages client side and then sends anything to do with the message to authorities, that is breaking the end to end encryption.
This is either done by 'AI', which means huge numbers of false positives that are actually legal, private and probably intimate get sent to authorities (hence breaking the end-to-end security model for that legal content), or by a secret, un-auditable collection of hashes - which are still fuzzy matched, so there would definitely be false positives (again, breaking the security model for legal content), but potentially also Governments could start to add other, legal material to the database, such as certain political material to detect dissidents. Since it's un-auditable, there is no way to know whether it's actually just illegal material in the database.
So whether it's AI or PhotoDNA or whatever, there's no way to do it that doesn't break the security model and cause more danger to innocent people, including destroying the privacy of children as well as adult, law-abiding citizens.
Even if you enable iCloud backup E2EE, or disable iCloud entirely, iMessage is still not E2EE as your conversation partners are escrowing (to Apple) the keys from the other endpoint.
My point is that when politicians do something “to save the children”, it’s rarely about actually helping anyone but themselves.
[1] https://www.eldia.com/nota/2010-4-23-actriz-porno-salva-a-fa... [ES]
[2] anyone who still gets ID'd for alcohol despite being well over 18, and often over 25 too