The laws regarding CSAM/CSA are not the problem, they are fine. The problem is that we are expected to give up our rights in the vague notion of 'protecting children' while the same authorities actively ignore ongoing CSA. The Sophie Long case is an excellent example where the police has no interest in investigating allegations of CSA. Why is it that resources are spent policing CSAM but not CSA? It is because it is about control and eroding our right to privacy.
I agree that our current legal and law enforcement system isn't up to speed with 21st century internet. And it has to be updated, because this kind of makes the internet a de-facto law less space, covering everything from stalking, harassment over fraud to contraband trafficking and CSAM.
I don't think full scale surveillance is the way to go in free, democratic societies. It is the easiest one, so. Even more if surveillance can be outsourced to private, global tech companies. It saves the pain of passing laws.
Talking about laws, those along with legal proceedings should be brought up to speed. If investigators, based on existing and potential new laws, convince a court to issue a warrant to surveil or search any of my devices, fine. Because then I have legal options to react to that. Having that surveillance incorporated into some opaque EULA from a company in US, a company that now can enforce its standards on stuff I do, is nothing I would have thought would be acceptable. Not that I am shocked it is, I just wonder why that stuff still surprises me when it happens.
Going one step forward, if FANG manages to block right to repair laws it would be easy to block running non-approved OS on their devices. Which would than be possible to enforce by law. Welcome to STASI's wet dream.
All of the 'bad things' you mention are already very illegal. Changing the laws in this case will only lead to tyranny. I cannot emphasize this enough, you cannot fix societal ills by simply making bad things illegal. Right to repair is of course crucial to free society.
By laws I mean the laws governing police work. And bringing police up to speed. Obviously CP and other things are already very much illegal, these laws are just hardly enforced online. That has to change.
Stalking and harrasment isn't, at least over here. Victims are constantly left out in the cold. Same goes for fraud, most cases are not prosecuted. Especially if these cases cross state, and in the EU, nation borders. Because it becomes inconvenient, so police isn't really bothering. And if they do, the fraud is done. The stalking went on for years. And nothing really improved.
Hell, do I miss the old internet. The one without social media.
International fraud is a really interesting problem. I've proposed a mandatory international money transfer insurance that would pay out in case of court decided fraud. It would make doing business with corrupt countries that look the other way on fraud within their borders crack down to preserve their international market access.
I have hands on experience with, what I'd call at least attempted fraud, with crypto. Back when Sweden thought about state backed crypto, a lot of ads showed up where you could invest in that. I almost did, call centers used Austrian numbers. Not sure if there was even any coin behind that. I reported it to police, got a letter after a couple of months that the investigation led nowhere and was dropped, apparently Austrian authorities did find anything on the reported number.
A couple of hours online found
- the company behind that operated out of the UK
- the call center was not in Austria but used local numbers for a while
- company was known for that shady business but never even got a slap on the wrist
I decided to never count on authorities for that kind of fraud. Or report it, because that's just a waste of time, unless you lost a shitload of money.
There's a lot of dumb fraud. Being international of course makes everything harder. Usually the amount of investigation is related to how many people were scammed. People need to learn how to do due diligence because the definition of fraud can get vague at times. I think your example is a good case of due diligence, it couldn't hurt to blog about their fraud though.
People did write about it, that's how I found out so much so quickly. I didn't invest, but cake reasonably close. One could call it due diligence, but I can see how easy it is to fall for things like that. I got a lot more sceptical of these ads, even more so than before.
