>Like actually finding and arresting Eipstein clients?

Genuinely yes. It's a viable political strategy to respond to this with a redirection towards Epstein. "How can we waste time on these chat controls when there are obviously people guilty of the worst version of these crimes that go unpunished due to their money and connections? We need to focus on those criminals instead."

Once again, this is a political problem, it needs to be solved with politics.

when people say "it's rational" they're invoking this feature of rationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

in other words, if you see behavior in others that doesn't seem reasonable, there's two possibilities:

1. it makes sense to the subject, using the axioms they're reasoning from, which they've chosen because they have a stake in the outcome

2. an uninvolved, anonymous commenter on the internet knows -- better than the subject -- what's best for them

It's not always the case that (1) is correct, but it's the better prior than (2). And this fact being a downvote magnet here doesn't change that.

CSAM? You mean the system the Belgian state uses to identify children online?

(not even joking https://www.csam.be/en/index.html )

Fantastic quotes for services the Belgian government offers:

"Make your life easier with CSAM"

"CSAM ensures that everyone follows the same rules"

"If you are interested in a service CSAM has to offer, please go straight to our Contact page"

Stop trying to shut down discussions that you don't like.

Agreed.

I think that framing would be much more vulnerable to companies saying "no no, there's no human reading your chats, we just want to apply these fixed filters".

> except that honest-to-God child rapists get extremely lenient sentences in Western Europe and rarely (if ever) get deported afterwards.

Where would you imagine western European rapists could be deported to? Presumably Fred West, Jimmy Savile, Ted Heath, Gary Glitter, Richard Huckle, Ian Watkins, Stewart Hall and Fred Talbot need to be sent back to Pakistan or similar where they learnt their wicked ways. You daft get

Exactly, that is the American philosophy being referenced.

Aren’t stupidity, shortsightedness, and corruption universal human “values”, well-spread all across the political spectrum?

As far as I remember, law enforcement officers or army people were to be exempted too

> Politicians and all their communication are to be excluded, for they have decided it is obvious that we can trust them

What’s the point of criticising USSR and China only to reinvent it

Right. The root of the problem is that the kids are unarmed and can't defend themselves. We need an organization that does for kids what is done for the pandas [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/sHY_xOj2M_g

what about...

Man, the paranoid ramblings every time the EU gets mentioned here really are something else...

huh, i stand corrected. what a massive blunder in that case.

and they should not have done that

It is being used against me, but not my governments, by private enterprises :)

That would have to happen, and by then it's too late. The best historical example is, not to Godwin the thread, but Dutch Jews who registered with the government and then when the Nazi's took over, that information was used against them. Political expression online is relatively safe under the current regime, but who knows if a future regime will also feel that way. If you posted something online about immigrants or criticizing a politician that became illegal to express, where would you be? Seems far-fetched, but in the history of the world, it isn't. People would rather not get persecuted for saying something they said 30 or more years ago because a lot can change in that kind of time. What once was acceptable becomes not in the different light of decades later. I'm sure if you go back to the very first comments I've made here, you'll find something embarrassing, though maybe not illegal. (An ernest plea that information wants to be free, probably.)

Communication wasn't digitally indexed and recorded forever, historically, and something intimate I whisper to a lover or very close friends doesn't ever need to see the light of day.

The guise that there's a predator out there, trying to cocerce 13 year old children to have sex with them is a good cover by the government to gain this control, because how do we refuse that? Won't somebody think of the children? So we have to acknowledge that yes, there are bad people out there, and no, I don't support Prince Andrew or the Epstein class, but at the same time, in the history of government and abuses of power, Chat control is going to be used against you and I, and not the Epstein class.

>It creates a moral asymmetry where one group is "defending children" and another group is "defending an abstract concept", but group A wins out primarily due to millions of years of human evolution. It has very little (IMO) to do with the actual underlying concepts being debated.

You aren't actually engaging with why group A wins. Those "millions of years of human evolution" actually instilled in people a desire to protect children.

>There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.

Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?

>And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.

I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.

Drive you straight to prison

Then fund the initiative by taxing those same tech companies. "This problem is hard or expensive to address" does not assuage the desire to fix the problem.

There are countless reasons to be against these chat controls, but it's easy for a layperson to understand how they would address their specific concerns. The only way to effectively counter that is providing an alternative that does a better job.

> The problem with describing it in terms of cost-effectiveness is that you now have to put a price on how much we can justify spending on child sex trafficking.

The problem with not doing this is that you in fact actually have to do it, or else what are you going to describe as the problem with the proposal that would spend six trillion dollars to save one life?

> If we believe that these tech companies have through their software and platforms made it easier to exploit children, that justifies taxing them to offset the negative externalities they create. We then take that money and use it to increase funding for investigation and enforcement.

The problem with that proposal is that it's foolish. Special-purpose taxes should only be used if you're specifically trying to discourage something (e.g. cigarettes) since a) they're inefficient because you need a wasteful new collections bureaucracy instead of using the existing already paid for apparatus for collecting general revenues (money should go to protecting kids, not tax bureaucrats) and b) you're then targeting a specific industry for a new disadvantage which will oppose it much more strongly than trying to get the same amount of money from the general fund.

The actual meat of that proposal is to increase funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation. But that's exactly the sort of thing where if it's cost effective to do that then it will have no meaningful opposition and then will either be enacted without controversy or already has been. At which point they immediately go back to trying to pass Chat Control.

> If we believe that these tech companies have through their software and platforms made it easier to exploit children, that justifies ...

Do we believe that? At least relative to the rest of the internet (ie not-big-tech)? Isn't singling out big tech in this manner just a talking point used by the disingenuous actors attempting to foist this on us?

What is even the supposed motivating ill here? What exactly do you mean by the phrasing "exploit children"? That's awfully vague for something we're supposed to be targeting.

> ... at least puts the people you view as the enemy on the defensive ...

It feels like you're ignoring the point you're responding to here. The pattern outlined was one of bad faith, where after each reasonable attempt the process merely repeats itself ad nauseam. So then in effect your suggestion is to follow the same strategy that hasn't worked in the past.

We aren't dealing with a good faith opponent who will back down when an alternative wins out. They will return with the same argument, and it will still hold sway with the same people, because the rate of the crimes in question will almost certainly never reach zero. At some point the political solution must be to attempt to educate those who are being taken advantage of by the bad actor. To refuse further accommodations when the other party is clearly acting under false pretenses.

It also seems like you're neglecting to address the relative expense. Chat control is cheap compared with Wyden's proposal.

> Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr.

Ok, but by this logic all freedom of citizens can be taken away, because it could lead to a single child being trafficked.

The end result is that even the children you're trying to protect are now under permanent surveillance of an authoritarian government where sex trafficking probably still happens, but the law permits the government to wrongfully ruin more people's lives than are saved by the claimed "noble" act.

Wait a minute. If the claim is that we're going to destroy privacy to protect children, asking first for proof that it will actually help children doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.

I can admit that your concern is perfectly valid, even share your concern, and still oppose your solution if your solution won't actually work. In fact, I would argue that I have a greater concern for the problem, because I care enough to worry about actually solving it, instead of just doing some ineffective measure that looks good.

That's at the level of reality, though. At the level of how this gets spun in media and politics, it doesn't often work that way. Performative action too often rules the day. Recognize it for what it is, though - performative. Asking if the solution actually works is a valid real-world response, even if it doesn't play politically.

You don't have to use Amazon/Meta/Google. You have to use the government.

Let's not forget that these are the people and laws that are supposed to represent and help you, not the other way around. While private companies have no such obligation.

For now none of Amazon, Meta, or Google can jail you or legally do violence on you, separate you from your family, etc. Your sense of threat is extremely miscalibrated.

We are not required to pick amongst evils. We could, in fact, say private chats are private and end to end encryption is sacrosanct.

Well there besides the asteroid there is also the option that involves the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Until the sun grows in a final blaze of glory and burns all Qurans at the same time for 100 million years?

You say that like it’s a bad fnord

Fortunately the US has not only freedom of speech in the constitution but also tens of millions of armed civilians that place a hard limit on how much control the government can have over people's speech. The only reason the Chinese government can achieve such control over speech is because it can disappear anyone who speaks against it.

It doesn't even need guns; Nepalese youth managed to stop social media censorship there just by going to the political capital and threatening to beat the MPs to death.

The existing mechanisms are inadequate or not fit for 2026. Hence this discussion.

You are agreeing with me :)

That's his point.

>I don't understand that part then. You can't break open E2EE by willing it open.

the mechanism to remove privacy from suspects is typically called a warrant.

(end-to-end encryption does not matter if you possess one of the ends)

> They were unarmed and the government was...

Exhibit A says: Bullshit.

[A] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...