Don't Spy EU
dontspy.eu
dontspy.eu
1. the first political fight is about the ban of real-time identification in public spaces. that's the dystopian scenario that nobody wants, and that's why we participated in the creation of https://reclaimyourface.eu in 2019.
2. the second (not because it's less important, but because it comes later chronologically) is not to let the monopolists get stronger roots.
Both have their complexities, and the European Parliament made something OK for 1 and 2, now the Council of European Ministries is screwing up both.
The ethical arguments: (i) massive biometric surveillance is bad in itself, (ii) the models are trained on biometric data collected without consent, (iii) and this is also fundamental to building the deepfakes (because the GNA discriminator uses a constant biometric comparison).
Even if there are three reasons, the Council is saying "Dear Parliament, no, we want facial recognition and unregulated foundation model".
So, DontSpyEU try to explain the related parts with a little prankish attitude, (and, btw, Microsoft lobbyists are just pushing their solutions, which are only meant to consolidate their monopoly)
Which – to be clear – is not support for it, but a question about what is emergent from the new things we create.
2. Analyzing images for biometric markers and linking it to a database of persons can absolutely be legislated against.
3. One step further, utilizing biometric information for decision making is also very easy to legislate against.
Some companies might do these things secretly anyway, but then we have the need for audits and strong enforcement of the law, which is another matter. First step is to get this into legislation.
But that doesn't mean any entrepreneur can decide to produce or hoard large amounts of weapons for personal or commercial gains. In most countries, there are legislative boundaries that make sure the state has monopoly of violence and (preferably democratic) government controls that force.
That system of course is still dangerous and fragile, but far better than roving gangs or ultimate power at the hands of commercial organizations...
Indeed, even though murder is illegal, it still happens. But the law is there to codify that murder is heavily frowned upon. Places where legislation were absent of the law isn't sufficiently effective enforced, tend to have more random violence.
The problem with that comparison is that it would be very obvious and noteworthy if Nestle started to drop bombs or hired mercenaries to prey on villages who tried to fight their abusive water practices, or whatever analogous weapons fiction you can imagine to Big Tech abusing their data and resources for invasive spying. People would die and/or be injured, likely property would be destroyed--these are extremely tangible things.
Big tech could be using facial recognition for years and fly under the radar. Privacy is essentially intangible.
I guess that difference stems from the novelty of privacy invasion "weapons". A bit like attempting to threaten a Roman soldier by pointing a machine gun. It takes time, probably a couple of centuries to build up experience with surveillance to fully grasp the ramifications.
But we're also no longer at the unknown-unknown point; we understand that there might be serious problems unless we dial down the pace at which we allow data hoarding.
At least some privacy would be preserved if there was a law that said "if you have a legit reason to track people using facial recognition, you must throw away all inferred information after 1 hour". Or some other arbitrary limit. Or a law saying you're liable if your data were ever to leak. Or some other obstacle.
We can, and IMO should, ban this type data use in commercial and party political contexts, but that isn't going to do anything to stop criminals and foreign governments doing these same things for their own commercial and political goals.
We need a milieu where we can survive that.
Banning research is entirely different.
No matter how popular that becomes I suspect it'll turn into something that police will enforce selectively whenever it suits them rather than those laws going away.
Werent you worried about face scanning precisely because its a seemingly inevitable evolution of technology? The use of “but” is confusing to me. It seems like the reason for being concerned has assuaged your concerns.
The cat's out of the bag. But you can still exercise caution. I remember when that app FaceApp was trending, and everyone wanted to see what they looked like when older, oblivious to the ulterior motives behind the app. Essentially they were building a FR database from user generated content. So, don't feed the beast and don't upload your faceprint to apps every chance you get.
How would the EU enforce a multinational ban on facial recognition or biometric pattern recognition?
The GDPR requires notification and consent if a website uses cookies or collects information, right?
Seems like a banner is the best way to approach that, so it is kind of mandated indirectly.
Contractual obligations, legal obligations, vital interests, public tasks, and legitimate interests do not require consent. You ask for consent if you collect data you have no legitimate reason to collect in the first place. This should already tell you a lot about those pesky banners. The GDPR "homepage" [1] has a ton of information with regards to this topic. Don't be fooled by those who blame your shitty web browsing experience on the GDPR. It's on them, not the GDPR.
[1] https://gdpr.eu/
You might not like the business practices of these websites, but it's their business practices and they are legal. And if they want to continue doing them, then they do need the banners, which are dictated by GDPR.
How you get the consent is up to you. The GDPR does not mandate any specific method, banners or otherwise.
In that case then, a banner is the best and least intrusive way to do that, given the alternative is a popup or redirect.
Thus, for many of these sites, the GDPR does directly mandate the banners.
It's political capital and the game is border security. Russia is moving to a position where they can bluff again. It's not a simple matter of true or false because it's a constant race condition.
It's not "announced" yet and the links aren't embedded in the page yet, I'm testing if the sentence at the top ("The AI Act must protect human rights and work for civil society, not fall into easy concessions to the surveillance ecosystem!") works well or not.
About Instagram stories (I'm building a GPT ), which would turn the most complex article into a series of stories. We don't have a graphic designer and we only do social media in a personal capacity, without a real strategy. I'll update here when I do, I guess if the day goes well it would be around midnight GMT.
The Don't Spy EU is a very unfunded project with only a few people working on it, with other day jobs. (But I'm very happy about the outpouring of support we've gotten from HackerNews - lots of new politician names have been imported, and lots of pictures too!)
For this reason I have really noticed a spike in views and input, it was very important to be seen now that time is running out. if any of you can also share it on reddit or other tech-politics related forums, it would be really helpful!
When companies spy on their customers/users it's a 4 million Euro fine, when member states want to track the phones of its citizens it's a human rights violation, but when the EU it self wants something similar or worse it's a question of safety.
So the appointed by the elected will consult with the elected and come up(or already came up) with a proposal and the elected will vote on it.
This website is made by some interest groups(both from Italy) that want to pressure the elected to reject a certain proposal.
Nothing weird really, just politics of a democracy in action. If you agree with the position of these interest groups you can support them, if you don't care you can ignore them or if you disagree you can start a counter campaign.
The direct responsibility to the citizens concerns the elected ones. The commission is powerful but their power is restrained by the elected ones and the elected ones can replace the appointed ones if they are not happy with it.
Anyway, direct democracy exists only in few places, like in Switzerland. EU and most of the democratic world runs on representative democracies, that is you elect people who you trust that will work the best for your interests and send them in a fancy building to vote on stuff and hoping for the best.
The EU explicitly works for collective interest, not individual interest.
It is not really honest to say you can put layers upon layers of indirect representation and the democratic process would not suffer. Legitimacy is lost on the way.
The most powerful part is the Council, where each member government is represented and is the mechanism by which member states pool their sovereignty. Nothing happens without the (often required to be unanimous) agreement of the Council.
Recent case in point: an EU Commissioner stated that aid to Gaza would be cut in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks - this was quickly backtracked when a member state objected.
This is clearly false. The member states exist independently of the EU. If you get rid of the EU, all the states still exist. Which means the EU is something more than “just the member states”. The EU is obviously a governing body on top of and between the member states. There is an EU president, parliament, and other offices for crying out loud. There is no way you yourself can believe what you’re claiming.
You can load as much meaning as you like on top of it, but there's no external party. The president of the EU commission(there's no president of EU) is elected by the heads of the governments(the EU member state governments, elected by the people of that state) and approved by the EU parliament(directly elected by EU member state citizens). So, If one of the band members is elected by the other band members to be the lead singer, is that band member something external?
The exception is if I am an official, a public persona or a dissident of the country doing the spying. But for everything else the impact of your own government spying on you is much more relevant.
Of course situations were friendly states spy on each other notwithstanding.
The EU doesn't have security services. What you're referring to is what (primarily) the member states want and they try to get it at the EU level so they won't be in violation of EU laws
In any case this specific request is about adding additional safeguards in a new act, not about stopping an ongoing practice or blocking a regressive proposal like the chatcontrol issue
States are allowed to have armies, corporations are not. States can send people with guns after you and lock you away, corporations can not. Do you think that's weird too? States hold more power than corporations because corporations exist only because states allow them to.
Now whether states are a good thing or not is another question of course.