Denmark wants to push through Chat Control(netzpolitik.org) |
Denmark wants to push through Chat Control(netzpolitik.org) |
If the European people are too stupid to stop it and simply keep on voting for the parties who support this sort of law, then so be it.
The criminals will move on to other means of communication, the privacy minded folks will move to sideloaded Signal-like apps and take their friends and families with them if possible and the rest will just have to learn to live under the new EU-Stasi regime and watch their privacy being stripped a little more day by day.
You could still have an airgapped computer where you encrypt your messages with GnuPG or similar, and then send those.
The European people are being worn down, eventually those who want this will get it through - and unfortunately this kind of thing is extremely difficult to repeal (think of the children!)
As has happened in every case so far (with increasing intensity and ease), the internet will route around it.
How will the internet route around client side scanning? Some here will not be affected but I suspect the masses would have a harder time assuming they are even aware that cell phones, Windows recall and Mac mediaanalysisd are performing scans. Most people do not install custom phone OS images.
I moved from a country that used to have strong privacy laws(Sweden) to another that still has them.
Although Switzerland is far from perfect, it is a stable democracy with protections for its citizens.
The problem is when you build these gigantic political organisations, like the EU or USA, there is nowhere to go when the political elite decides to ram down the ideology du jour down your throat.
The world should be moving towards decentralisation, direct democracy and voluntary cooperation, but unfortunately, the opposite is the case.
Peace
Do that and you will be ass raped by stronger powers in record time... if we don't start a war in eu amongst ourselves.
The eu was established as an economic union trying to prevent war in Europe and it has been very successful in that. Going the other way would probably cause havoc. Look at Hungary and Slovakia even with war on our doorstep.
I am of the opinion that the EU needs to federalize. It needs to look as one country from the outside, while having independent countries on the inside. The goal here is not to be overwhelmed by the economic and military might of china. Build up resiliency and self sufficiency and keep democracy alive, which seems to be on the decline everywhere.
The question is how not to end up in a totalitarian regime, which chat control is about. It doesn't and it never will be about the children.
The EU is necessary.
It is good you are asking how to avoid the EU turning into a totalitarian state, which is the way it is currently heading.
I don’t think it’s possible.
I just had a conversation with American colleagues about life in Europe. And the things that stood out were “cookies policy,” trash recycling, and such trivialities.
Meanwhile, Europe is already at war. China openly wants to dismantle the good life Americans take for granted. Their news is full of militaristic propaganda, day after day.
This isn’t the 90s. It’s not the 1950s either. You didn’t “win” the war. You cant build, you can’t manufacture. And yet you talk about freedom?
Reality is going to catch up very soon. Many of you will lose not just your comfortable lives but your freedom too.
Take Denmark’s policy with LLM monitoring. What’s wrong with that? China and Russia do it already — and they benefit. That’s how you prevent both external and internal threats. That’s how you build a strong state.
If your adversary monitors and you don’t, you’re already in a losing position.
And don’t forget — the subject country is directly part of the brewing conflict in the Baltic Sea with Russia.
> The United States is the world's second-largest manufacturer after the People's Republic of China with a record high real output in 2024 of $2.913 trillion [0]
I believe the US' manufacturing capability is the core of your comment and I also believe it's incorrect. Sure we don't manufacture fast-fashion or junk products and we may have lost quite a bit of tribal knowledge[1] with respect to that. But it's nothing that can't be re-gained.
And the benefits China and the Russia get from their spying programs? Americans by-and-large simply do not care about them. Denmark can do whatever they want with their tech as long as their citizens approve. Like you said, they're in a different position given their geographic location - thus, they have different priorities. But Americans do not feel like they have such an existential threat so they are (generally) not willing to give up their privacy.
Whether "reality" catches up to your predictions remains to be seen.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St...
You can make this same argument about any authoritarian or totalitarian policy.
I think this post makes clear who our adversary really are.
I read somewhere that Italy is recovering and reducing its debt... But didn't really follow up on that.
They might start to do, if governments become so obnoxious with their surveillance, that it somehow makes life inconvenient for regular people. However, then governments will start to block the network access for "uncertified" devices and software, or even to restrict the access to general-purpose computers altogether. That's why it is better to defeat this politically, than to play eternal cat-mouse games.
I agree but laws can take a long time to change so I prefer to do things in parallel but that's just me. I can be an ass at times.
Would this work? https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/u17hsa/please_help_m...
sudo killall -STOP mediaanalysisd mediaanalysisd-accessA few months ago, a broad security law was passed by the National Assembly in France. Initially, this law contained provisions, including the scanning of private messages, which were removed from the main text by a large majority of lawmakers, as it was deemed too intrusive.
The few officials (including Macron) who now claim that "France is OK with chat control" represent a minority that currently holds power in a country whose government was ousted less than two weeks ago.
Crooks.
There's a bunch of people organizing against those crooks on the OG Stop Killing Games discord. Just type "stopkillinggames" into Discord's invite box.
One interesting note: The group has even identified a suspected Russian spy network tied to the Russian telco MTS. MTS paid a close to $1B fine for unsavoury business in Uzbekistan [1] and is known to operate GFW and similar tech [2] in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Belarus [3] for example. The company is trying to get at people's biometrics, by posing as a KYC / Online Safety Act compliance company. [4] They probably do provide the services, but one can imagine where the data is also going.
As a parallel thread mentions, anything related to Chat Control and other Internet control things immediately becomes a target for state actors trying to undermine democracy. [5] In my opinion, it is also often initiated and pushed for by them.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-mts-to-pay-850-million-to-s...
[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/data-leak-reveals-how-russia-...
[3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mobile-telesystems-o...
[4] (link works after joining said discord) https://discord.com/channels/1281358651470381097/14006009921...
War is peace, isn't it ? /s I am not against chat control if they start making public the chats of politicians. I know, it's not gonna happen. National security.
Interesting that this national law was pushed by people in an alliance around Macron: the same team which might sign the opposite for the EU. Just a drop in an ocean of nonsense, from where such a dangerous bill might emerge.
It is beyond stupid, beyond malicious. The closest I might come to describing this would be 'suicidal'.
It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing.
Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?
We already had this debate once before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
The answer is that it is a bad idea.
This also recently came up when huntress exposed what it could do with its tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 and then failed to understand why this might be a bad thing.
Or you know crowdstrike getting rolled in a supply chain attack: https://www.ox.security/blog/npm-2-0-hack-40-npm-packages-hi...
The government wants a back door to spy on its citizens, not realizing that any back door you build is rife to be exploited by anyone.
Don't forget, Russia has trillions of dollars for bribes.
Hate to be that guy, but source?
I have zero confidence that "the Worlds least corrupt country" is actually the least corrupt.
Also, how she bent for the 15% tariff to US while we apply none was another disgusting moment of selling out EU.
From the Euroskeptics to the anti-imperialists, everyone wants the EU dead. Sadly, I tend to agree with them more and more.
Wasn't he the Greek Minister of Finance that was supposed to be a game theory genius, but was completely incapable of understanding why his proposals were politically impossible?
Is a crackpot who shouldn't be taken seriously.
That's what we have become.
Signal will probably add an option to circumvent this like they have for other laws in countries that block signal itself.
So, Europe, if you really want this, go ahead and spy on the majority of the people, I'll just keep using signal or something else that respects my privacy, even if it's "illegal" by your standards (again, like I already do for many other laws).
If the story is different this time around and they double down on enforcing this, I'll just leave to Switzerland, if they do the same, I'll go somewhere else. Or I'll become an activist, I've actually been kinda bored of everyday life, maybe fighting the "system" will be fun for a change.
I don't care anymore, there'll always be a way to do what whatever me and those close want, as long as we are not hurting anyone.
It's just completely bonkers from start to finish.
this is just bananas crazy. so many lives will be ruined by false positives. the chilling effect will be like an Arctic snowstorm. and any actual groomers will find ways to disable it.
Guys, our Justice Minister is not trying to spy on citizens. He is not some cartoon villain.. He is just incompetent. He doesn’t understand the technical arguments. He wants to curb the distribution of child abuse material (who wouldn’t) and does not understand that you can’t make backdoors for the police only
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknologi/analyse-derfor-hol...
- Palantir Technologies
- 'not-for-profit' Thorn
> The Commission’s failure to identify the list of experts as falling within the scope of the complainant’s public access request constitutes maladministration. [0]
> ... the complainant contended that the precision rate of technologies like those developed by the organisation are often overestimated. It is therefore essential that any technical claims made by the organisation concerned are made public as this would facilitate the critical assessment of the proposal. [1]
> The Commission presented a proposal on preventing and combating child sexual abuse, looking in particular at detecting child pornography. In this context, it has mentioned that support could be provided by the software of the controversial American company Palantir... [2]
> Is Palantir’s failure to register on the Transparency Register compatible with the Commission’s transparency commitments? [2]
(Palantir only entered the Transparency Registry in March 2025 despite being a multi million vendor for Europol and European Agencies for more than a decade)
> No detailed records exist concerning a January meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of controversial US data analytics firm Palantir [3]
> Kutcher and CEO Julie Cordua held several meetings with EU officials from 2020 to 2023 - before the former stepped down from his role - including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.[4]
> The Ombudsman further concluded that Thorn had indeed influenced the legislative process of the CSAM regulation. “It is clear, for example, from the Commission’s impact assessment that the input provided by Thorn significantly informed the Commission’s decision-making. The public interest in disclosure is thus self-evident. [4]
> EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has announced that she has opened an investigation into the transfer of two former Europol officials to the chat control surveillance tech provider Thorn. [5]
[0] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658
[1] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00016...
[3] https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-on-...
[4] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-...
[5] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-l...
Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.
And I mean _stupid_. You wouldn't believe how intensely stupid some of those people are, but read some court records and you will come away deeply surprised we are making it as a species.
But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.
P.S. I'm not saying "stupid => does crime", please don't read that into what I said above - I'm just saying that `#("stupid and also does crime")` is a large number.
They could not care less about children. Kids are just a political weapon they use to create a pretext for global warrantless mass surveillance.
Part of the answer is that they think the surveillance will be magically omniscient, because it's technology they don't understand.
Part of the answer is that they think that if there's a tool they could possibly have to give law enforcement more power, they must have it.
Part of it is that they don't care so much about actual bad guys, but about exercising absolute control over the general populace.
Part of it is that they don't believe that crime can actually be eliminated, but they do believe that they have to continue to take all possible measures against it.
And part of it is just that they don't think it's politically safe for them to oppose a measure like this (similar to, but not quite the same as, the second point above).
I would not mind browsing porn on my work PC. I wouldn't do it, but I would not have a very bad feeling while or after it, because so be it. I don't think my employer can fire me for that.
I would mind about doing CSAM activities though.
The law in question (PL2628/2022) doesn't mention CSAM or sexualized/erotic content depicting children or teenager by name. It's broader than that, it mentions that any content deemed offensive to children/teenagers, or that violates their rights as defined in the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, should be removed by social media.
My friend supports the law because he thinks it will stop 99.9% of the bad guys looking for CSAM on the internet because he believes they get their content from Instagram. I tried to explain to him the law won't do shit to stop the bad guys but instead just add more surveillance to people who aren't doing anything wrong, but he doesn't want to accept it, and even called me out saying I look like a defender of the bad guys, simply for the fact that I don't think mass surveillance and age verification of people is enough to stop wrongdoers on the internet, or to protect children.
It's more than just "snooping occationally". Government officials are at the end of the day strangers, and it's not their business spying on people's private lives. Not only do they intend to infringe upon our privacy in one of the most intrusive ways possible, but also at gunpoint. Think about that.
Most politicians have no idea how anything works. Electric lights are simply magic, let alone the Internet. Obviously you can pass a law to make the wizards make the magic do whatever you want, right?
Not only the bad guys, I will jump into any software that allow me to bypass this crap.
Downsides are purely theoretical and only brought up by conspiracy theorists and academics.
(Technically correct, the best kind..)
The only real hand Greece had was to simply refuse the bailouts and refuse to pay the debts. In that case they would have been cut off from international bond markets, they would have had to renounce the Euro and start using a different currency.
All that was possible, but the Greek government could see the obvious - it would have been far worse than what was on offer.
…of course, Zscaler with “all Wordpress sites blocked” is also a thing, along with the majority/nearly all of European non-English countries, because god forbid you want to read the emmet docs or something.
The situation is, people don't need billion dollar bribes. In my backwardish central european country they caught one government official who was physically handing over state secret material to a russian spy, straight from their embassy, for 500 euros a pop. There is a a video record with good audio from that, the conversation is really absurd yet real. You just need to find one gambling or alcohol addict, or some other failures and press few buttons.
Also, for russia undermining literally whole western world is mission with priority #1 for last 20 years. Eastern european countries who intimately know how bad russian terror actually is were warning about this repeatedly whole western world, to be very effectively ignored and laughed at by western leaders till SHTF.
Sure, those were not plans for F-35 or new aircraft carrier but people take surprisingly little to get corrupted, some even do it for free for ideological purposes.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-mts-to-pay-850-million-to-s...
Doesn't that show you what a silly measure GDP (nominal ) is? Do you think south korea could carry out a multi-year war against US/NATO under international sanctions? South korea would collapse immediately under international sanctions. South korea wouldn't be able to feed its own population let alone fund a war under international sanctions. Also using GDP( PPP ), russia's economy is 2X+ larger than south korea.
> Hate to be that guy, but source?
There obviously isn't any. Nobody has trillions for bribes. Trillions is war money, not bribe money.
On the other hand, there are also criminal groups, right now, that do actual crime, that operate on discord. Going after them would be trivial in comparison, and yet we introduce extreme spying laws instead.
Meaning, chat control might pressure criminals. For a bit. Until they wisen up and use more secure protocols and end points.
Which, not only exist, but are very easy to use and wide spread.
Discord isn't exactly known for it's privacy features, still I imagine there's some challenge?
If the effort is low, and they're not doing it today, they're not going to do it after chat control either.
No one said that. Files leaked by Snowden describe NSA's activities as durable, even against legal attack, thanks to layers upon layers of digital, procedural, legal, and other forms of defense in depth. Among them, plausible deniability and dual use technologies. You have pointed toward both. So their tactics worked on you.
> But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it.
Don't forget that ubiquitous surveillance is exactly the tool most useful for blackmailing or discrediting opponents as well.
that is not true. User lordnacho clearly expressed he thinks Chat Control will be ineffective, and from that one can easily take that ineffective initiatives should not be supported except in cases of wanting to abuse the infrastructure. It's a trope common enough that it comes implied and does not have to be spelled out.
Feel free to respond to lordnacho directly. I don't accept communication for them. Nor can I speak for them. The only way to address the issue you have with what you feel they've implied is to talk to them about it.
> and from that one can easily take that ineffective initiatives should not be supported except in cases of wanting to abuse the infrastructure.
Your assumption.
I find the fact that mass surveillance is largely ineffective at improving safety to be incidental and ironic. It is highly effective at removing safety and liberty. That's the salient point.
Much like torture, mass surveillance corrupts those who practice it, which has led principled people to oppose it on grounds including human rights and an awareness of atrocities committed with the aid of surveillance in the past. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Do you deserve liberty and safety?
> It's a trope common enough that it comes implied and does not have to be spelled out.
You'd do well to respond to what's been said, and not to what you think has been implied. Responding to perceived implication didn't serve you here.
https://www.etsy.com/market/don%27t_hear_what_i_didn%27t_say...
Not sure, speculating: somewhat hard.
Discord must comply with government subpoenas, so if you're the FBI it's easy. If you're law enforcement, I imagine they tell you to go kick rocks if you don't have a warrant.
Law enforcement is pretty bad and mostly lazy. They can't be bothered to pull people over going 20 over, let alone get a warrant for every wannabe punk.
If you're not in the US, then I imagine the effort is insurmountable.
> If the effort is low, and they're not doing it today, they're not going to do it after chat control either.
No - but it can be automated, which is the issue.
Sort of like how the US was wire tapping virtually all internet traffic at one point with PRISM.
Then I imagine the "law enforcement" is done using machine learning and heauristics.
Do you use black slang? Put him on the list. Is your name not that white sounding? That's right, the list. Are you on hacker news? You guessed it - the list.
I mean, that's pretty much how automated facial detection works now. And yeah, it sucks.
Actually, in the EU, the police (and ...) have direct access to surveillance channels. Meaning, they have a website interface that they click around on, without anyone from the provider ever helping them at all. This allows for extracting call logs, listening in, finding location, lists of IPs they connected with, what DNS records they looked up (yes, that part is defeated by actually configuring DNS in your phone, but who does that?), ... I've seen these interfaces because I've designed their network installation and a bit of initial support. They are installed on cell towers. Oh and "support" meant getting calls from all sorts of local police stations who found out this was possible and essentially directing them to the person who could give them access.
Of course, the spying equipment itself does not log who access it and what they access. Clearly, the police do not need to be told what the value is of hiding what you're doing even if it's legal.
The only issue holding back mass-surveillance in the EU is "who pays for it?". Essentially a number of hours are tracked? Why so little? Then the local SSD is full. They want 6 months, minimum, but the state is unwilling to pay a single cent for that, and forcing providers to pay for it, that the executive (ie. ministers) haven't been willing to do.
Yes, they're supposed to get a "research judge" permission, which is more-or-less a subpoena, except much more informal, but do they actually do this? It's an honor system.