Let yourself be monitored: EU governments to agree on Chat Control | Hacker News Reader

Let yourself be monitored: EU governments to agree on Chat Control

patrick-breyer.de

162 pointsrdm_blackhole145 comments

Online grooming is obviously very bad, but it doesn't seem like it's happening very much. Hope for Justice reports ~8,600 cases in 2022 [0], but there were 72.5 million kids in the US that year [1], so that's just .01% of kids. Like, if this is the threshold, we need to go after gun violence and car dependence, because in 2023 firearms killed 4,733 kids and cars killed 4,048 [2]. We need to go after air pollution (wood and gas stoves) which are crazy murderous to kids [3]. Do we really think we'll make a significant dent in that (very low) number by backdooring encrypted messaging apps? Do we even know how much of this is happening over encrypted messaging apps vs. just straight up X and Instagram? Honestly all I want here is an actual fig leaf, not someone spraying a fig leaf air freshener, not someone singing a whispery folk song about a fig leaf from long ago, not someone opening a can of fig leaf La Croix.

[0]: https://hopeforjustice.org/news/online-grooming-and-child-se...

[1]: https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp

[2]: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/202...

[3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8296171/

None of this is about kids. No one cares about the kids. It’s about finding a boogeyman to exploit for control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

As a "citizen" of the EU you cannot even sue against the EU violating your rights. The flaws of the EUs are apparent. Not that nations outside of it necessarily fare better, just look at the UK, but this was done to not have any democratic input on surveillance.

The EU governments will ruin the lives of random innocent people with buggy AI.

Look what happened yesterday in the UK: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/uk-woman-mistaken-as-s...

UK is not EU anymore. And UK was a surveillance state since a long time now. Luckily here on the mainland we don't have these issues (yet).

Are you sure about that?? The EU is about to swing politically quite far to the right in a couple of weeks time. Chat control is just the beginning.

I was already looking for how to get out of the UK with the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, before the Brexit referendum, owing to glaring deficiencies such as the Welsh Ambulance Service being on the list of government agencies which have the right to access, without a warrant, the preceding six months of internet connection records for anyone who isn't a lawyer or a Member of Parliament.

You should have just run pron in a background tab 24/7 to give the person checking a really bad day.

The evidence given to the committee had a different, but equally relevant, example about how completely pointless the entire concept was for their stated goal.

Something like:

Govt.: "Imagine a teenager goes missing, we can use these records to find if they were posting on Twitter!"

Expert testimony: "The way these things work, their phones will connect to Twitter hundreds of times each day even if the person themselves doesn't."

The government may well be dumb enough that you were correct to write:

> the person

But the assumption of their incompetence is only wise when asking if they'll do something you want, not if asking if they'll do something you hate.

Censorship and monitoring is not something I would attribute to the right within the last 10-15 years. In the US, things like the Patriot Act are bipartisan. Otherwise, things regarding moderation/censorship/tracking tend to have far more favorability among the modern left leaning governments.

> The EU is about to swing politically quite far to the right in a couple of weeks time. Chat control is just the beginning.

Not that I disagree with you but two things... First chat control is put in place by regular political parties, not far-right ones. Then it's the regular parties, by trampling with their boots on the face of EU citizens, imposing them things they didn't ask for, that made EU citizens decide to vote far-right. I don't know if the far-right is going to win but many of those who are going to vote far-right are going to do it because they've seen tens of millions of african and middle-eastern refugees imposed on to them. We're talking about a sizeable percentage of the entire EU population now being composed of refugees, arriving illegally in the EU (for the first time ever in 2024 there are going to be more refugees coming in in a year than babies born from EU parents).

Many in the EU simply cannot stand anymore to see their countries becoming third-world countries in a timeframe of mere years.

Yeah… not good. Particularly for a political organisation set up to counter and repair the damage caused by fascism. On both sides of the political spectrum, politicians act as if society simply doesn’t exist. Plus even if it’s not far right, it’s moving rightward as a response to the overarching and opaque system of governance that has been put in place that common people cannot do anything about. It’s one of the primary reasons for Brexit, and in that case the EU chose to see it as simply “a British problem” rather than taking pause to think whether there are serious systemic flaws in the EU that contributed to it happening. So now, as usual, Britain is doing the exact opposite to the rest of Europe and about to turn left wing and socialist for at least a decade, and staying out of the fight that will eventually erupt inside the EU, in order to be the ultimate peace keeper who’s job it is to resolve it.

Right, it's EU parents or refugee parents. Nobody else lives here like actual, highly qualified people that countries like Germany are begging to import before all the "natives" retire.

>highly qualified people that countries like Germany are begging to import

Begging isn't enough to get you the best people. You need to pay them well first since "begging" doesn't pay rent. You also need to respect them and give them a high status in society, not treat them like second hand citizens because they don't speak your language well enough and are struggling to navigate your (often discriminatory) bureaucracy.

Full disclosure: I am a migrant internal to Europe(Scandinavia > Switzerland). My wife is an indian national with a University degree. I am personally pretty pro migration.

But who is doing this "begging"? I doubt it's the working classes of Europe. More concrete, I suspect this "begging" is done by the owning class so they can have cheaper labor for their industries. To the working man of Europe, it seems to me the current migration scheme is a net loss.

You just described the main reason for Brexit.

Brexit didn't fix the populations' immigration issues. They just replaced European migration with Asian and African migration.

>I suspect this "begging" is done by the owning class so they can have cheaper labor for their industries

And to have more rentoids to push up the real estate prices and fund their pensions. I call this being "cannon fodder" for the economy.

>I am a migrant internal to Europe(Scandinavia > Switzerland)

Can I ask what brought you from Scandinavia to Switzerland? AFAIK life is already quite good in Scandinavia.

> Can I ask what brought you from Scandinavia to Switzerland? AFAIK life is already quite good in Scandinavia.

Life is great in Scandinavia if you fit the mold. Switzerland and especially Zürich is extremely heterogeneous.

the government is begging, because birth rates don't sustain the population which is aging out, and if you want to keep your economy in those conditions you either bring in people, or encourage reproduction (which has a lag).

or let your economy shrink and don't complain when things are worse than they were when you were a kid. you can't have your cake and eat it too.

edit: all of this is beside the point anyway - my point was there exists a way to legally live here, contribute to the society, yet not be an EU citizen that the person above completely forgot about.

As for cheaper labour - i'm not sure for most companies they end up with cheap labour exclusively from refugees, you can find cheap labour from within the EU as well.

Germany is a joke paying pathetic wages.

AI is ubiquitously bad across borders though.

And here the EU is mandating bad AI like Facewatcher. Do any of these regulations do a single thing to defend against or prevent these kinds of AI-based-governance legal assaults? I highly doubt it.

Nations ruling to control the Internet as they see fit just makes me hope, "the more you tighten your grip, the more more star systems will slip through your fingers."

The pretense of control feels ridiculous. Trying to force your state upon the entire online universe stands a chance of normalizing non Big Tech routes, creates a moral ground for e2e encryption to be even more visible & more of a cause.

EU: In the name of the EU government, you are all under arrest.

Democracy: It's treason, then.

I wonder if it will apply to politicians as well, or is it just for us, lesser people...

They have the option to opt out. It's not written in this particular blog post but it was part of the original proposal. I don't see why they would not have kept it in there.

The logic doesn't even make sense. "Save the children, except of course the politician's children".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063025

You lesser people. Government officials and agents will need chat systems that are exempt, so they can officiate and agentize. Surely that's plain to see? Don't worry, they've promised not to use it to groom kids or anything.

In all seriousness, what prevents this from just being ignored and people using open source software? Is it that the EU will prohibit open source chat from being sold on the various app stores?

People won't use free software. Proprietary software is enforce by (self)regulation. I.e. you can't use banking apps of rooted android. Some banks won't allow Linux Firefox and so on.

> In all seriousness, what prevents this from just being ignored and people using open source software? Is it that the EU will prohibit open source chat from being sold on the various app stores?

The European Commission proposal said providers of software application stores should be made subject to obligations to take certain reasonable measures.[1] It seems likely removing non compliant apps would be considered reasonable.

Commercial open source apps would be more likely to comply with the requirements than non commercial closed source apps I think.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Of course not. This will be decided under current Belgian presidency. Belgian politicians already have a very recently upgraded secret non-css communications government network at their disposal (This was in the local press a couple of weeks ago). I guess they see what's coming.

As a EU citizen, this makes me so god-darn angry. The parliament tries it again, and again, relentlessly, against every single legal or technical advisor. And there is nothing I can do about it, not even voting. The EU claims to be democratic, but actual legislation is passed without much democratic input. No matter how the vote turns out, there will be enough support left for laws like this. Always. And if this iteration won’t pass, they will modify and retry. Until they eventually, but inevitably, succeed. So it’s only a matter of time.

And I know this, we all do, and yet am fundamentally impotent about it. It’s infuriating.

Maybe that is the kick in the guts needed to really move to a decentralized chat application that literally cannot be compelled to provide data since it doesn't have any.

EU would just force the client to do client-side scanning. But then again, if the client is open-source: fork, compile, repeat.

Down the line obviously, is the death of general purpose computing where you canNOT do that, or canNOT installed non-signed applications (e.g. iOS but for all computers).

Some people reading this might get the impression that the EU Parliament is not a popularly- and directly-elected legislative body with votes every 5 years...

That aside, what kind of democratic input would you like? Swiss style?

Do you write to your MEP~s?

It's a particularly amusing statement when the elections for EU Parliament are next week, from June 6th til 9th.

Lots of places let you vote. The impact that has on actual political work varies.

Well, shall we talk about the role of the commission? Or the court of justice? Or the whole apparatus of offices, sub-offices, representatives, and Initiatives? It’s all so complex that pretty much nobody you meet could correctly outline the way European legislation works. There have been discussions among scholars for more than 50 years whether the EU is a sufficiently legitimate democracy.

I’m definitely pro EU; after all, international collaboration is the only thing protecting us from the USA and China, but there’s lots of room for improvement here.

I note you didn't answer any of my questions

But I understand your anger, and largely agree with you.

The EU Parliament is directly elected but legislative initiative is the sole prerogative of the European Commission. They can’t pass a law without Parliament’s assent but they can keep on trying and they’re the driving force behind the legislative agenda.

Well, for one, the EU had only lobbyists as consultants until some of the associations that defend freedom made so much noise that the EU could nothing but invite them, too. Point is, they should have been invited in the first place and not after massive outcries.

EU parliament are a bunch of dicks.

Article 50 is right there, still. If the EU is untenable in the long run because of objections like this, either it will have to make itself more accountable to citizens, or the governments which are accountable to them can be pressed into invoking Article 50.

(Article 50 is the the mechanism for a member state to leave the EU, as in what the UK invoked)

Politicians wont care (or would actually support this kind of laws), so they wont trigger article 50. Unless citizens start to complain loud enough, maybe.

> The EU claims to be democratic, but actual legislation is passed without much democratic input.

Note that this will still require a parliamentary vote before it passes, even when the governments endorse it. Considering the elections for EU parliament are next week, I'd definitely recommend voting on a party against this. EU Parliament has already voted out previous versions of this exact law.

Besides that there are also your national elections, as any nation could veto a law like this.

That’s what I mean. I’m voting on a party opposed to this, but it won’t change anything. The way the parliament is set up, the way most people tend to vote for centrist parties, and the amount of supporters from different fractions will ensure there will always be at least some parliamentarians in support of all kinds of surveillance, and will continue to press forward on these topics. It only takes a single period of public opinion swinging into a safety minded direction, and these forces win permanently.

Except this is not the parliament, this is the commission (the representative of the governments of each country)

The parliament is usually against such measures. (And the EUCJ, etc as well). The same parliament that has an upcoming election in 3 days.

Afraid of the rising alternative parties, the current power structures seek to forever freeze their power in time by passing authoritarian laws. Sadly, they only way to end this it by massively voting alternative parties no matter the cost.

That comment raises a different kind of fear in me… are you talking about the „alternative“ right-wing, populist parties? Voting fascists is definitely not the answer either.

> And there is nothing I can do about it, not even voting.

You’ll be able to vote next week. 6-9 June 2024.

https://elections.europa.eu/

I've heard arguments in favour of this level of surveillance going a bit like;

"I have nothing to hide and I think this is a serious problem, so I'm okay with the EU scanning my messages if it helps fight CSAM"

And if you argue against in case of wanting privacy the counter-argument ends up being; "Do you think CSAM isn't a problem or you're on the side of the pedos?"

Don't see how to argue with a person who simply doesn't care about the right to privacy or these regulations being the first step to mass surveillance. I.e. like someone wrote "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse"

I had this discussion with some mates in the office. I just told them that I don't want to share the t<>ts pics my wife sends me and the d<>ck picks I'm sending her when we're away for work.

Ah... wednesday again, and the EU making our lives worse. It's all they do. Literally 100% of EU is negative.

I'm happy they forced Apple to use usbc.

how to say "I only know about the EU via HN headlines" through different words

And might I also add: regulation voids that are picked up by companies can result in worse results

(though of course I'm 100% P.O. about the proposed "big brother" implementation)

I also know the EU well from the money they take from me

"What did the Romans ever do for us" am I right?

Though of course naturally people can search what they think is better for them. I bet you would have a lot of fun in lower regulation places (though usually by having a remote job in one of the 'boring and full of red tape' countries)

I will live in my country, the country I was born in. EU is just one of many cancers eating it alive

I believe Rome didn't survive either. And in this case they do not build roads, they are actively trying to scan my private communication.

Remember when Apple did this while at least trying to keep privacy? Well now it’ll be mandatory without the privacy. Yay EU!

> Remember when Apple did this while at least trying to keep privacy?

Remember when Apple (who always toots the privacy horn) leaked photos that some users explicitly deleted 10 years prior?

Even if the intentions were good (and I doubt it), there's always human error. That's why we must fight against any surveillance tech.

Again?? I guess the plan is to try until they succeed. When one victory is enough and attempts are unlimited...

The infinite headed hydra of politicians using Save The Children to slaughter privacy is such a downer. There's seemingly no governance against bad governance; the war never ends, no progress is made to enshrine privacy ever.

SOPA and PIPA in the USA took massive internet mobilization & blackouts to shut down but wait a couple years & FOSTA gets passed. There's always another head to the hydra, always more assholes.

You can literally just self host and run open source software and it will be the same experience or even better since you won't have your meta data spied on at the same time.

You can, but the girls you want to send nudes to you aren’t going to get round to installing your open source software on their iPhones. Or even manage to if they were inclined.

That is the problem. You can opt out, roll out your own thing, but try and ask your friends and family to switch.

> send nudes

Unless this is a synecdoche for something else, I'm not worried about it. Computers can sneeze out superficial 2D digital reproductions of women for less than a dime a dozen.

Real, live people are so much more interesting to interact with on that level. For that, we meet through public institutions (aka "pubs", eg bars/clubs/churches/schools) as members of a society.

I'm just saying that if you're some kind of renegade evading authoritarian surveillance, you probably recognize that life is too short to spend engaging oxytocin production over some pixels.

This reads like a combo of Mr Logic and Major Misunderstanding, from the Viz comic.

When was the last time you met someone in the pub?

ie churches/schools? Constantly. Frequently. Several times a week.

This felt like what an LLM, trained on hackernews data, would output if someone used as prompt "Give me the most stereotypical comment about sending nudes to woman that a hackernews user would write"

You should recalibrate your LLM detector, then.

The worst part? These are the same people getting their nudes datamined by the trusted and secure hand of their benefactors: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-settled-lawsuit-womans...

Frankly I feel like we all deserve it, at this point. This shit is just what happens when nobody cares anymore.

> Frankly I feel like we all deserve it, at this point. This shit is just what happens when nobody cares anymore.

Come on. I as a programmer didn't realize Google spyed on me on non-Google websites until maybe 2015 some time when it struck me that the ads matched my Google searches.

I thought the idea of someone spying in poor little me being silly, until embarrassingly late.

With LLMs the spying can take enormous scale. It will most likely get way worse before there is any chance of a recourse ...

Oh yeah, it's headed down the shitter alright.

But look on the bright side; Windows Recall! So many cool features getting made, and with enough AI greasing the wheel you'll have willing customers of brand new spyware. The way things are headed, I don't think we're going to be able to expect the average user to meaningfully resist.

Such as?

So I won't be able to use Signal to send pictures?

Nope. Either you agree to the terms or the picture/video function will be disabled.

What if you’re in the UK? I have no idea if we’re still implementing EU ideas like this, or if Signal being based in the EU will cause a blanket sweep.

It’s also almost hilarious that the centre of the EU in Belgium will hoover up all the child pornography in Europe. Not like Belgium is a hotspot for that or anything… and not like it will end up with gazillions of images of nude children regardless of them being intended for pornography or not.

I am not sure. I think you guys in the UK have your own bill regarding EtoE coming up.

Probably. Except we have no money to pay for it.

What if the app refuses to provide those functionalities?

I am guessing they will be compelled to do so. Signal said they will pull out of the EU.

Just put it inside a zip and then you can send it. Maybe some plugin will be made to automatically unzip files and show contents.

I could build from source I guess. Or we’re back to usenet-style text encoding of images

Time to set up my own Matrix/XMPP server.

Please do. I have spent several days the past 2 weeks trying to get another one setup. Somehow the docs are worse today than they were a year or so ago.

As far as I can tell help with issues installing/running is still only done in the chat rooms, which is great if people have the right answer at that very moment.. however a basic phpbb forum or bbpress from 20 years ago would be a better experience.

We definitely need more people installing it and putting out info on what what works and how to do things since so much of it left to draconion things like postgres docs and nginx docs - which are not great either.

I think I have a new one setup and running, but the complexities of nginx and a separate domain for the element web has put me off another week at least (and being asking to switch support chat rooms since it's now not a synapse issue it's something else)

I will say it's pretty great when it's running (for a long while, pruning and vacuuming and a spinning / non-ssd drive have led to my previous install being canned)

which instructions have you been following? they should not have regressed…

I saved some of the commands and urls I needed to go through the docs: https://globaladvancedmedia.com/weblog/2024/matrix-synapse-2...

(can update that with more info given time)

I'd be happy to record video of the processes to see the confusion I end up running into if it would help make docs better for the community.

I started with the matrix-synapse and got lost in nginx configs then went to other websites instructions to try to patch it up to work - and to the synapse chat and then to caddy then back to nginx and then wishing there was forums instead of chat - and wish I could pay someone I could trust to help but you can't offer money in the chat - which is a good rule -

but I don't know, haven't gotten to the part where I test the options in element and such yet, so much.

I did have a running system for over a year that I put together on debian 10 - so I know it's possible.. just for me it's like 1 out of 3 attempts to install on a new server, maybe I'm just not cut out for nginx / caddy / certbot and the like, I don't know why they all seem so hard and working with tech help via phpbb forums 20 years ago seemed like a better experience.

https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

XMPP seems better since usage of GPG based encryption is "standard".

I'd say OMEMO[1] is the standard for XMPP these days, not OTR/PGP.

I switched my wife, family, and a few friends over to XMPP. Aside from the lack of "stickers" in Conversations and Dino, they seem to be doing okay[2].

[1]: https://conversations.im/omemo/

[2]: But then again, this is the only way to reach me, so maybe they just don't complain to me directly.

Oops! Appreciate the correction!

I think one of the problems is that they'll just ban the apps from the app stores if they don't comply. Including Matrix clients.

Tech savvy people might be able to compile/sideload/apk download (etc.) their way around it.

But it's very difficult to get friends that you're talking with to do the same, when they don't care or don't know how to.

So all your data will just be scanned on your friend's side.

So we are basically fucked.

Thank goodness Big Tech cares so much about our privacy. They really stood up for us, by doing absolutely nothing in the face of surveillance and enrolling themselves in hidden warrantless compliance programs. Good on them, really, a standup job all around.

Next up: Big Tech Plays Victim Card, Insists They Would Have Done Better In Hypothetical Universe Where They Don't Propose The Same Thing

If you live in a walled garden, then yes.

An alternative approach I am working on is simply doing the encryption outside of the phone. Yes this requires a second device, but it allows you to do true E2E hardware encryption and still use twitter or whatsapp or whatever platform. With this appraoch Apple, Google or the EU government cant really stop you.

[edit-to-add] obvious downside to this model is that your friends then need to have the same type of device as well, so it's kinda apple-to-oranges comparison...

It could be dangerous in Germany, there were posts how police raided XMPP hosters.

Link? Encryption is client-side.

XMPP should be able to comply with the police providing metadata.

Link? Encryption is client-side.

XMPP servers should be able to comply with the police providing metadata.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/german-poli...

Commenting on my own link but to go from from GDPR to this, I am honestly dumbfounded and quite upset.

And then some sociologist somewhere wonders why trust in governments is plummeting around the world.

The US was historically built on the idea that free enterprise, for all its warts, is less bad than governments meddling in your life. Much of modern Europe is built on the opposite idea: that governments know better and that private enterprise is inherently corrupt.

I don't want to pick sides in that debate, but it amazes me how wonderfully ahistorical it is. The US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments; Europe, on the other hand...

Anyway, the disconnect you allude to isn't a disconnect if you consider it from this angle. GDPR is meant to protect you from private businesses. Chat control is supposed to protect you (and the state) from online predators. It was at no point about protecting you from the government.

> US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments

Yeah except the founding story of the country

And the California Genocide ...

And the confiscation of indigenous land and forced expulsion of those people ...

And state constitutions which prohibited Blacks from moving in ...

Institutionalized Jim Crow-era race-based restrictions, including Sundown Towns and redlining...

The forced expulsion of Chinese-Americans from Tacoma, by white supremacists including the mayor, judge and city councilors, which became the method used to further Chinese expulsion in the US West.

Oh, and the Japanese detainment camps in WWII ...

Nope, no history of oppressive governments in the US.

I found it mildly problematic that non American views about American history are flagged because they don't fit into the American world view.

Schools in some states aren't allowed to discuss any topic that creates "discomfort, guilt or anguish on the basis of political belief." Which means they can't teach about slavery or manifest destiny or any other aspect of American history for which an honest, critical look might make white people uncomfortable. Texas even wanted to mandate that 'slavery' be referred to as 'involuntary relocation' and slaves themselves as 'workers' in textbooks, and Texas teachers are forbidden by law from teaching that slavery was part of the founding of the US, they can only teach that it was a "deviation from American values."

It's a bit more than mildly problematic.

It’s not historical.

You have inverted cause and effect. Europe has a history with authoritarian governments precisely because of this and the US has escaped this so far because of the culture of distrusting the government.

The US was historically built on the idea that slavery was fantastic. The colonists rebelled against the UK because the UK was freeing slaves. They fought the civil war over states rights - the rights to own slaves - and proceeded to have the largest prison population on the planet, for-profit prisons with forced manufacturing labour. Along with historic megaprojects like railways and dams which killed a lot of immigrant labourers. And poor employee protection, unions, minimum wages, social safety nets, social health care. And is currently forcing women back to being mothers by blocking alternatives, and lowering the ages children can be sent to work.

The USA doesn't think free enterprise is great, it thinks 'free' enterprise is great for the elite.

> "The US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments"

Unless you're black. Or a woman. Or poor. Or Mexican. Or disabled. Or smoking the wrong plant. Or a criminal. Or prescribed opioids by a doctor bribed by the pharmaceutical reps and it went wrong for you.

Much of this comment could sort of be true if you put a really heavy spin on cherry-picked facts and poured some salt on them, but there’s no way to substantiate the claim the US revolted because the UK was freeing slaves.

For example, that’d be hard to square with Thomas Jefferson, in his capacity as governor of Virginia, banning the slave trade (not slavery) and freeing all slaves imported despite the ban two years after the Declaration of Independence- literally during the Revolutionary War. There was always an abolitionist streak in America, driven mostly by the same elements as on the UK and developing at the same time.

> "there’s no way to substantiate the claim the US revolted because the UK was freeing slaves."

Not the only reason, things rarely have a single reason; but there's more than nothing to it. Certainly the OP claiming the USA was built on the spirit of free enterprise when it looks more like it was built on the backs of slaves and downtrodden labourers isn't going to pass unremarked[1]; some quotes from https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/37986/was-the-so...

"He's not 100% wrong that the desire of slaveholders in the States to protect their "property" and the institution itself has been drastically underplayed by Americans in talking about their own history (and really, can you blame them?) For a good historical perspective on this, I highly recommend Slavery and the Founders, by Paul Finkelman."

----

"I think that there were probably a great many factors that led to the American Revolution. Concerns about the growing anti-slavery movement in the UK were undoubtedly among them.

Although it is true that the case of Somerset v Stewart in 1772 was a landmark in the campaign against slavery, I suspect that an earlier case would probably have caused greater alarm to slave-owners in British colonies.

In the case of Shanley v Harvey (1763), the Lord Chancellor, Lord Henley stated " ... as soon as a man sets foot on English ground he is free". He further observed that, in his learned opinion, a negro could take his master to court for cruel treatment. Now, these comments were only obiter dictum, and so not binding on subsequent courts, but they would have caused huge concern to slave owners anywhere in the world who considered themselves to be British subjects."

----

Then Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart#Influence_i...

"The Somerset case was reported in detail by the American colonial press.[citation needed] In Massachusetts, several slaves filed freedom suits in 1773–1774 based on Mansfield's ruling; these were supported by the colony's General Court (for freedom of the slaves), but vetoed by successive Royal governors. As a result,[citation needed] some individuals in pro-slavery and anti-slavery colonies, for opposite reasons, desired a distinct break from English law in order to achieve their goals with regard to slavery.[47]"

[1] yes yes British Empire had slaves, genocides, cruelty, poverty, &c.

I’ve personally perused the primary source material: hundreds of newspapers and the letters of revolutionary leaders. There is no sense in which this was a motivating factor for almost anyone. I can’t even recall it mentioned.

I’m also in puzzlement about this alleged American denial of slavery. In US K12 in the South my curriculum and that of everyone I know was: here’s the bad things we did to the Indians, Revolutionary War, here’s the evils of slavery, Civil War, World War II and the Holocaust and we didn’t do enough, then the heroes of the Civil Rights era. This all got harped on for 12 years. Almost nothing else got covered at all. It’s very self flagellating.

> The colonists rebelled against the UK because the UK was freeing slaves

The Declaration of Independence predates legal abolition in England by 30+ years.

Influential US founders knew from the beginning that slavery was a moral blight and worked to permanently undermine it. 20 years after the revolution, congress outlawed the importation of slaves -- an act that was forecast by the constitution itself and which also predated English abolition legislation.

> The US doesn't have a history of oppressive government

largest prison population in the world, slavery, Manzanar, Jim Crow laws, McCarthyism, police brutality…

> The US doesn't have a history of oppressive governments; Europe, on the other hand...

The genocide that happened when the settlers, well, settled flew over your head? All the intelligence agencies' interference in other countries probably flew over as well.

>And then some sociologist somewhere wonders why trust in governments is plummeting around the world.

Actually, I think it's the other way around. It was the same in Communist ruled Romania. In the 1960's, the times were quite good. Good economy, good freedom, little government oppression since the average folk had it quite good and little reason to revolt despite the totalitarian regime. But as the economy started to go downhill, and quality of live kept decreasing as shortages for food and essentials increased, the government oppression increased with it.

Basically, the way I see it, the more unhappy the citizens get due to erosions in their quality of life and the obvious increase in wealth inequality in the last decades, mostly driven due to unaffordability of homes, then the more driven towards oppression and surveillance the governments get as they fear the potential backlash from the citizens and don't want to get "Ceausescud"[1]. In other words, better to preemptively stop a revolution before it happens, hence the increase in surveillance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_execution_of_Nicolae...

Does this affect us if we chat through a non-EU country via VPN? And through a combo of non-EU VPN and non-EU chat service?

VPN won't save you this is CSS(client side scanning), the scan happens before the encryption of the message/image/video before being sent to the servers.

At some point they will figure out, that people use VPNs to access messengers. Then they will go after the VPNs. Think of the ChIldReN! And the TeRrOrIsTs!!11 And then we will have a situation here similar to China, where most VPNs do not work, and assumingly only state-cooperating ones work, but are actually illegal now.

I guess the children in China are really safe?

With this it would still be enough to just use an OS that lets you decide what to install. Namely not iOS, Android, ChromeStuff, Windows S or these other shitty locked down environments big tech companies sell to naive users.

Despite the technical possibilities, these bills should not be accepted and in my opinion directly contradict European rights. If they do not, these rights don't hold any value because the case is that obvious.

Not sure about this current proposal but the previous one was on-the-phone based, which Apple double-timed into production so capability is there for EU to access when they finally flip the switch. That proposal would mean that it is Apple and Google that would provide access to your data before any apps or VPNs saw it (i.e. at the OS of the phone level). This new proposal sounds like maybe they backtracked on that and will just coerce the app and platforms?... not sure.

Title: “‘Let yourself be monitored’: EU governments to agree on Chat Control with user “consent” [updated]”

Can't meta, signal, etc force their hand by simply disabling their services in europe?

I don't see how that would benefit them to go against this since their business is to monetize their user's data as much as possible.

If anything, this is probably a new revenue stream. Now they can get all the data on behalf of the EU and use it as they want.

In theory, sure.

In practice, Meta's entire business model is to waste everyone's time by inserting advertising in the middle of what would otherwise be friendly conversation, so if they did switch Europe off, then everyone in Europe would have a more pleasant life and Meta would get less money — nobody would clamour for the stuff to be switched back on.

I suspect Meta knows this.

Signal might care enough about the principle, but even then the services are too easily substituted to matter to anyone else.

As if Meta would care. Facebook’s business model is to invade your privacy to advertise to your face for profit. Since this proposal would invade your privacy but not take away profit from Meta, they have zero reason to care.

I find it hard to believe the CEO who called users “dumb fucks” would oppose on principle.

Some of these companies love to scan your messages and content very much.

Clearly the Bourgeois State is capable of protecting our civic rights

So,… what does that mean for Signal, WhatsApp,…?

I have been thinking for a while that one goal of the GDPR could have been to combat foreign big tech companies within the EU. This seems like quite a shift if privacy was genuinely the main concern. Am I missing something here?

I don't have kids. Can I opt out?

> Now is the time to take to the barricades for privacy and secure encryption!

How? I have signed a few petitions, but living in Norway, I do not have a representative to write to

This ship has sailed to be honest. This post is just a rant and it seems nothing will stop this this time.

Might be a bit of a problem wrt GDPR or doctor or lawyer confidentiality, or possibly even just working under NDA. It would preclude using those chat apps.

I have some problems, hope someone corrects or enlightens me:

> images and videos sent to others will be scanned automatically and possibly reported to the EU and the police.

I would like to know what exactly “reported to the EU” is. As far as I know, EU is not some nebulous eye in the sky, and certainly is not in the business of judging file uploads. Thus, a new body of authority needs to be formed, its competencies defined, as well as the rules of it interacting with the member states.

By necessity, this upload judge won’t be sifting or monitoring any individual Jean-Paul Mrkvička across the platforms. More likely, it will monitor how much suspicious stuff gets reported from which platform, and go after the outliers. Say, Telegram would be far more likely to raise the sus-o-meter than iMessage.

Then, it remains to be seen how the said organ would deal with suspected under-reporting by the platform or conflicts with GDPR or, say, German privacy laws which are stronger in places.

Then the question about the police. Which police is it supposed to be? Europol? Local police in the member states? The latter will surely invite the inevitable increase in mandatory paperwork and bogus reports. After a few false positives, I bet if the police gets handed down reports and those reports are not about people already suspected from some other sources, they will be swept under the rug and allowed to rot by any police officer with a little bit of wrinkly brain. It’s as if they don’t already have enough paperwork to deal with and, you know, real actual crimes to solve. Sure they will come knocking a couple times to innocent folks who sent beach photos with their kids in frame to the in-laws, but that’s until they find ways to work around these reports.

Correct me if I’m wrong, please, but I feel pretty confident it will go this way.

> images and videos that are deemed potentially suspicious by ‘artificial intelligence’ technology.

This is some unbounded optimism about reliability and accuracy of any “AI” to date, must I say.

The European Commission's proposal included a body it called the EU Centre to work with Europol.[1]

The report template includes IP address, port number, postal code, GPS data, username, email address, phone number, mailing address, profile information, other email addresses, other phone numbers, billing information, last login date, and other user information. Why did you assume it would not?

Reports would be forwarded to Europol and member state law enforcement authorities.

> The latter will surely invite the inevitable increase in mandatory paperwork and bogus reports. After a few false positives, I bet if the police gets handed down reports and those reports are not about people already suspected from some other sources, they will be swept under the rug and allowed to rot by any police officer with a little bit of wrinkly brain.

Was this meant to comfort anyone?

> It’s as if they don’t already have enough paperwork to deal with and, you know, real actual crimes to solve.

Child sexual abuse is a real crime. Some child pornography investigations have led to prosecutions for child sexual abuse.

Many legislators, police, prosecutors, and members of the public believe even virtual child pornography is a slippery slope to real child sexual abuse and reject any evidence pointing the other way. They consider possession a real crime even if you do not.

Law enforcement authorities supported this proposal. Most oppose surveillance rarely or never.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Law enforcement officials think it will help them fight crime, yes. The people who support this, though, are not the same people who have to go after whomever computer said needs going after and fill paperwork afterwards.

If the “artificial intelligence” sending police after some beach photos shared with relatives, or photos sent to doctors turns out to be worse than a coin toss and sending them on a wild goose chase more often than not, bullshit reports will ensue to make all involved parties happy.

Do you have evidence investigators oppose this proposal?

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