More context: this was written back before the first iteration of chat control got turned down by European Parliament, and even links to that revision. A few details has changed since then -- still it's basically the same thing, although now you need to opt in, otherwise you won't be able to send images and videos. Allegedly, it could be passed by European Council tomorrow.
It's a little ironic how the same legislative body that came up with GDPR is now implementing coerced consent. I believe they would also bar you from sending links, so no easy bypass with an image server.
It shouldn't be. In 2006, the Commission proposed, and Parliament agreed on, the Data Retention Directive. It forced all ISPs to save all browsing data on everyone for 6-24 months.
The idea that the commission or Parliament in any way cares about privacy is nonsense.
It’s basically saying “consent to me reading all your mail or you will not longer get mail that you need to live a normal life”. I can’t imagine why anyone wants to let the EU and some police clowns comb through their sexy time videos, kids playing on the playground, and personal journals. I would think a continent that has been through Stasi, the SS, and KGB would welcome this with open arms instead of grabbing the pitch forks and torches.
For me the "unelected" part is the key point here. I mean, if we ignore (totally valid) nihilistic views on the nature of governmental bodies, we are supposed to think that this is the point of modern civilized society (as opposed to "totalitarian states" like NK) where we rule over ourselves. We are even accustomed to call it "democracy" even though this is pretty laughable perversion of the word. But whatever, there is valid reasoning why "representative democracy" is the only solution, and there is valid reasoning why we need experts in the government, so long story short unelected institutions are ok and we are supposed to pretend that each of us kinda proxy-elected them.
(I mean, I'm really going to pretend it is ok: after all, I don't consider USA presidential election to be any more real than "proxy-elections" of appointed secretaries/ministers, and in Russia, where people actually vote for a president and he has a lot of power so it actually matters who is the president, people will claim for various valid reasons that this isn't really a democracy and Putin is more like a king now.)
But being as charitable to that world-view as I can be, EU structure feels way beyond that. Recently I tired to answer myself, how it came to be that I somehow "elected" Ursula von der Leyen? Or rather, how did "we" do it (keeping in mind that "we" as in "majority of voters" usually have different opinion than I do)? I just don't feel any connection. EC President is nominated by Counsel from the set of whoever-they-want (chosen behind the closed doors), and then voted-in by the parliament. AFAIK, the parliament never actually rejected a nominee, and BTW in Ursula's case 327/710 people voted against her, so she barely passed the bar. It somehow coincided that at the time my country's representative on the Counsel was "not really elected" as well, and by the end of my "investigation" I felt totally alienated. There is this European Commission thing, it affects me, I don't affect it. This is just how the world works.
The funny thing about the EU is that while they do all this theatre of parliamentary elections, the bulk of such decisions are always taken by an unelected organ, the EU commission.
It is not that I think they have mischievous intentions, on the contrary, but any unchecked managerial bureaucracy always go to the path of endless regulation and control.
I find this bizarre as well. The EU Parliament has no initiative, possessing only the power to approve or veto legislation proposed by the Commission. And then when they occasionally exercise their veto power, the Commission can just resubmit substantially the same legislation as before, as is happening here.
This also means the Parliament has no independent power to repeal previous law that it might have regretted passing. It must again wait for the Commission to propose repeal. I can count how many times an unelected administrative bureaucracy has proposed removing its own power on zero hands.
Then again, I am, personally, split: The standards, and process, to become a part of this technocratic body that is the EU are very high, and they will (ostensibly) select amongst the best candidates ...
... might this "technocracy" be an option in today's age of political mediocrity and populism?
Pan-European party Volt is going to change that. They are slowly gaining popularity and on recent elections to EUP performed better in Germany than some mainstream parties (3% nation-wide, but much better in politically affluent Berlin). I‘m sure they will become mainstream in the next 2-3 election cycles.
Highly doubt it. As mentioned, the backroom and opaque dealings among the individual member-states' governments are the real power in the EU. Even if Volt would win a good-sized bench in the EP (which they aren't), it doesn't change the balance of power.
The EU commission is not unchecked. Unelected governments (and instead appointed by the parlament) are the norm in most European states. Why on HN people feel entitled to make such comments? Is it a Krueger effect on politics?
Depends how you define unchecked. The European Parliament's only real recourse against the Commission is censure, and it's never been successfully done (although it came close in 1999 (Santer) and in 2004 (Barroso)). On the other hand, the EP has successfully picked off a handful of individual Commission initiatives, probably most relevant to HN being the 2005 Software Patents Directive. The problem with one-offs though is that it doesn't stop the overall direction the Commission wants to go; it comes back again and again, as it has done here with chat control coming back rebranded as upload moderation. There's no way to get them to change direction wholesale other than censure, which as noted above has never been successfully done.
checked means clearly bounded by laws and institutions. There are judges who disagree the EC. The council and the parliament have to say yes to new law. This is clearly checked.
The courts are arguably the least worse institutions of the EU, but they are slow and not really applicable in many matters.
The """parliament""" is a joke. Do you know of any other democratic parliament in the entire world which doesn't have the power to propose laws? I don't.
As people have pointed out, the commission can just keep pushing and pushing and pushing the legislation they want, as they are doing with Chat Control. It only needs to win once, whereas the other side needs to win every time.
AFAIK there aren't any other major examples of directly elected governing bodies who don't have the power of legislative initiative. There are more examples if you count indirectly elected bodies like the German Bundesrat.
The core governance issue isn't so much about the ability to propose new bills as it is about not being able to function as a true counterbalance. I think if the European Parliament simply had the power to propose repeal of legislation (even if they didn't get the power to initiate legislation), that would go a long way to improving the usefulness of the EP as an institution.
"The courts are arguably the least worse institutions of the EU, but they are slow and not really applicable in many matters." Slowness don't matter if we talk about unchecked EC.
"The """parliament""" is a joke. Do you know of any other democratic parliament in the entire world which doesn't have the power to propose laws? I don't." don't matter if we claim ah unchecked EC.
"As people have pointed out, the commission can just keep pushing and pushing and pushing the legislation they want, as they are doing with Chat Control. " EC can't because the parlament, the council and the judges can disagree. As again the EC is not unchecked.
Could you tell how the EC is unchecked? Can they create enforce which I have to follow without judges, the European Parlament and the European Council?
It would be more fair incarcerating each adult male citizen for 5-7 days, all female citizen for 0.5-1 days of high security prison in the name of child abuse mitigation.
Reasoning: they all have the opportunity to do such.
Just because people here might not be aware of the term "remigration". It is a Neo-Nazi phrase, popularised recently by the German AfD, that includes the deportation of citizens, to their "country of racial origin". There is no "right" view on this and the use of the language is revealing.
Would you prefer a different word? Facist also works. Xenophobe, racist, hater, etc also work. "Migration critic" is probably a more neutral / politically correct word.
Leftists threw these words around for so long that they are utterly devoid of the emotional power they once had. Now the backlash is coming, but most of the leftists on the internet--who've spent the last two decades hurling insults instead of engaging in good faith--are so unpracticed as to be largely incapable of engaging in good faith. So they just throw around the old words and wonder why they don't work anymore.
So true. Only the left is allowed to play word games vis-a-vis illegal aliens. I mean illegal immigrants. I mean undocumented immigrants. I mean migrants. I mean undocumented citizens.
They would not ban it, they would insist that only they have the moral high ground to use it. Whenever laws like these come up they write explicit exemptions for themselves into them.
They don't see themselves as merely human, they consider themselves as our betters. The closest thing to a ruling class with divine mandate we have today. That von der Leyen got her position in spite of election results is only the icing on the cake.
No, the center of European power needed printing presses for their own propaganda.
Instead the center of European power banned heretical works with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and executed heretics like Giordano Bruno, Jan Hus, Michael Servetus, Aonio Paleario, and Lucilio Vanini. Even if they were already dead, like John Wycliffe.
Absolutely. Brexit proofed that this is a really great idea. Who doesn't want to start paying through the nose for roaming again?
The idea that just abandoning a thing with some issues is better than trying to repair it (or even just keep it as is), does not seem quite realistic today. Even the various national politicians who wanted to do a *xit before the UK did this have quietly dropped those ambitions.
Dumb laws exist globally. Don't expect this to go away if tomorrow it was all up to the national governments again. Collectively getting bad laws like these repealed or changed is much more likely though.
They really should just be an economic block and only have laws to ensure fair business and tax structures across the continent and drop these totalitarian schemes pushed on the people to take away their rights. Hopefully they will wise up after a few of these violations of their basic human rights.
Meet up in real life I suppose. This is one of the examples where if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, but I'm aware this is a broken statement to make because a new government may decide that something that was OK to talk about is now no longer OK to talk about.
When I am elected God-Emperor, I will banish discussions about apple pie recipes, and all those that have been involved with apple pie recipes and discussion thereof will receive a Stern Talking To by the newly formed Agency of Apple Pie Suppression.
Since for now this is supposed to force the messenger developers a way to circumvent would be to directly download and install APKs of messengers that refuse to implement this and/or left the EU market.
This is obviously merely a short term solution since it should be clear that targeting hosts and developers of non complying solutions would likely be the next step.
Technical countermeasures have been doing a pretty good job at combating insane copyright rules for a while now. It's often said that technical solutions don't solve political problems, but I think it's important to retain our freedom to run whatever code we like on our computers because that does seem effective at enabling freedom of communication regardless of laws made to quash it.
I don't know, mobile phones and messengers in particular are a very small target compared to general personal computing.
There are very few relevant messengers and adoption rate is king, because at the end of the day we want to use these messenger to communicate with people.
Getting people to try out new/different messengers is already a pain. And here every blow against an uncompromised messenger to make them harder to get will lower its usercount and push more people towards the compromised software they can easily get on the store.
Sure I'd say some way of circumventing this will probably remain available for a while, but I'd say it is extremely easy to make this very inconvenient.
After all this isn't about having some way to communicate safely, this is about being able to communicate safely in our daily lives is what I'd say.
My friends and I set up a Matrix server and communicate through that. There’s only 8-10 of us in the group but it’s worth the effort. 1 guy pays for the server and dns. My friend and I maintain it and keep things up to date on a nix install. I’ve heard of similar setups with xmpp, but I have honestly never done anything with that.
It's fascinating that this is what they are claiming the legal basis is:
> The legal basis to support action in this area is Article 114 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The article provides for the establishment of measures to ensure the functioning of the Internal Market.
In other words: in order to trade efficiently in goods and services with each other countries need harmonised regulations. Countries have started to introduce individual laws to combat CSAM. Therefore these inconsistent laws interfere with operation the "internal market". Hence the EU can shut down private speech.
So somehow they twisted streamlining of commerce into termination of individual rights. It's wild to think how far that can be extended, if it can be the basis for this.
It also seems particularly ugly if you actually do frame it within the context that they are claiming: this is not "think of the children". It's actually "think of the commercial profit" - they literally say it themselves.
They abused a similar one in the US constitution (the commerce clause) to rule that growing wheat on your own land for personal consumption counted as "interstate commerce" (Wickard v Filburn) and backdoored into the federal government controling basically everything physical.
Yup, very easy to twist 'interstate commerce' clauses into anything you want and the US has a long history of it. The entire war on drugs on the federal level was justified by the 'interstate commerce' clause in the constitution as well, much easier than amending the constitution like they did with alcohol
Respecting the Fundamental rights of the individual in the digital realm is really the only thing that needs regulation on the internet.
All the various AI, targeted ads,... regulation could be solved with that simple focus. I see arguing about chat control or AI as downstream of the central issue.
If real privacy was the norm with minimal data collection the other issues take care of themselves. I believe the issue is linking the digital world to an individual without their knowledge.
The direction of travel was known for years, but people were called tin foil hatters. The divine EU would have never even tried to do something like this. And if they do? Well, they are doing to for greater good and you probably have something to hide if you don't like it. EU is the best thing since sliced bread you far right flag shagging fascist!
They are just lazy and occupied with other means of pretend right now, that's the only reason they did not pull a more drastic version of this just yet. It will come eventually.
Isn't there a law - or intelligence agency mandate - that does that already? See Snowden, FISA court requests, etc from 10+ years ago.
I ask "does that already?", but the way these things work is that they are not allowed to publicly say whether they channel messages to intelligence agencies. If you're doing things that intelligence agencies may find interesting, you already wouldn't be using these services.
Italy wants to stop people streaming soccer illegally and the lawmakers can't even understand what a VPN is, I am confident we can be sure nothing fully working will ever be implemented thanks to the sheer incompetence of our politicians.
This is reason enough for me to support leaving the EU. I always suspected it to become something else. And since VDL it has become rather clear that staying will make things worse.
The Irony is in the UK we are about to get a socialist state, not renowned for their libertarian acceptance of other points of view. I am sure the new Labour government will make sure we have the same system in the UK in the name of co-operation.
Sorry, but Brexit so soooo long ago, I really dont care anymore about the british whining. They kept the EU hostage for far too long during negotiations, I am glad its over, and I really really dont care anymore. Move on, its over.
That will be the end of whatsapp then and any other mainstream secure messaging platforms. Probably will do eff all for the real bad actors, paedos and deviants.
I don't think it will be the end because the vast majority of users will be completely unaware and/or indifferent to this - just what the parties behind it want them to be.
But you're right about the real bad actors, they already don't trust these platforms anyway.
That said, "grooming" in the broadest sense of the word happens on channels like Whatsapp, Instagram, even Pinterest for some reason because it's not blocked as social media by popular wifi filters.
Ex: girl (14) our son was friends with "had sex" with someone who claimed to be 18, but he recorded the interaction and used it to blackmail her to do more / other stuff. I don't know the details but that kinda thing happened via Whatsapp.
Fear will always lead to an erosion of personal rights. Fear of child predators will lead to erosion of privacy rights, and fear of terrorists has deprived all Americans of the right to protection against unreasonable search/seizure. Welcome to modernity.
That's only a fraction of the problem though. You have no idea how easy it is for for example, kids on the fortnite subreddit to end up on the NSFW fortnite subreddits and talk to others and start exchanging pictures.
The other thing nobody wants to talk about is that it's not always adult creepy men approaching kids, it's the kids themselves that seek out sexual conversations with strangers on the internet.
Sure, this is also the parents responsibility. But even with open phone access, internet filters, etc they will find a way, especially if their school gives them laptops and there's open wifi everywhere.
That's where this is also for. Parents cannot monitor all their children's internet access at all times. Children will resist and find ways around parents' control, as it has always been.
Fear is a completely normal and often useful emotion.
What scares me is how terribly bad we are at dealing with it. This is the weakness that terrorists try to exploit, of course.
We, as a society, seem to posess the emotional intelligence and maturity of a toddler being scared of the monster under the bed but happily following the friendly guy with a van full of candy.
The NPC population doesn’t know about this and doesn’t care. They haven’t heard of this and they don’t know what “e2ee” means. They have “nothing to hide”. They are your parents and grandparents, and your friends from work.
I blame people who do know and write internet comments instead of taking action.
How many of you have deleted your Instagram and Facebook accounts? How many of you are still reachable on WhatsApp and iMessage? How many people have you onboarded to Signal? How many people have you taught to sideload?
> blame people who do know and write internet comments instead of taking action
Amen. I’ve worked on privacy issues in the states. Never again. The overlap between people who care about privacy and those who are too lazy and/or nihilistic to engage with the civic process might as well be perfect.
If you care about this, call your elected. If you won’t, that’s the problem.
They're nihilistic for a reason, I won't call my representative because its a waste of time. Privacy-minded Americans are a tiny subset of the population vs. the most powerful corporate entities and intelligence agencies in the world, there isn't anything we (or my representatives) can do or say that's going to make a meaningful difference. If the snowden leaks weren't enough to trigger a reckoning on this issue then nothing will. At this point civic engagement on privacy in the US basically amounts to political masturbation, it feels good but does nothing
> The NPC population doesn’t know about this and doesn’t care. They haven’t heard of this and they don’t know what “e2ee” means. They have “nothing to hide”. They are your parents and grandparents, and your friends from work.
You got it right: They do not care. They do not care that privacy, democracy and freedom are taken away from them because they never cared that they had that in the first place. It's the eternal conservative vote that will never consider an alternative regardless of fact.
They vote Republican in the US and CDU here in Germany. Doesn't matter if they vote for a convicted criminal or that they ruin the future of their children and grandchildren. They got theirs, fuck everyone else. Doesn't matter what I do there's a block of at least a third to half the population that is not open to argument, reason or even facts.
Given it has suppressed an entire planet of innovation, prosperity, possibility, and experience, I would say it has negatively impacted all of us in ways you can't fathom.
Covid measures, enshittification of internets. Chat control in Russia has outcomes in people being exploited by thugs in the whole country. How can you observe the world without immediately seing these?
The same reason most people are a bit “thick” , stuff just won’t go into their brains or register with them. They have the mind of children but are in adult bodies with adult voices
It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own, while also having little influence over their decisions, unless I give up what I like doing and go into lobbying (or politics, which seems to me like the poor man's lobbying)
I've sent an e-mail to the permanent representative in the country I live in, but I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted. And angry for all the people, especially journalist friends, that are out there and unaware of what's going on.
I'm not sure this is what democracy is supposed to feel like, but if it is, it feels like shit.
It’s one of the reasons I’m against the continued growth of centralized power structures. Local governments aren’t perfect and tend to be more easily dominated by a little tyrant, but in general, the more decentralized the power structures are, the easier it is for people to change their situation. Your vote has a bigger impact, it’s easier to hold local officials accountable, and of course, you can move to a different town / county / province more easily than moving to a different country / continent.
Warren Buffett said something to the effect of: “I prefer to invest in a business that could be run by a monkey, because eventually it will be.”
A similar principle holds for governments. You will eventually (possibly consistently) have a government that is led by incompetent (or corrupt) politicians. How can you structure your system in such a way that their negative effects are minimal?
And it's really unbelievable how political parties in the EU (and US) who won't shut up about the threat from the extremist right gaining power also seem to have no fear of giving their enemy these tools.
Please don't bring that old American libertarian fantasy about moving if you don't like a local law to Europe.
The amount of people who would consider selling their house, moving their family and job because they don't like some local policy or its implementation is essentially zero.
Just following up, but I know many, many people who have moved to my state for exactly that reason: what they saw as government run amok in their home state. This trend spiked during COVID, but it continues due to various policy blunders that they are trying to leave behind.
So, yes. People do relocate when the local government becomes oppressive.
My family is in the US because my great grandparents immigrated here to get out from under the thumb of the UK government. In fact, unless you’re a Native American, you probably have a similar story in your family history.
But that’s the thing. The EU commission is by far vastly shielded from politics. They are not elected, they are nominated by the member states government, but due to the complexity of the EU they are always chosen from this limited and fairly homogeneous pool of professional bureaucrats.
It is not that they are even people or conspiring to create a Orwellian nightmare. But is the nature of power in the hands of the professional managerial class without real democratic input.
And we don’t know how to fix that. Politics is a spectacle ensuring that we vote for people who are poorly equipped to make the real decisions in a vastly complex system. The people itself are becoming dumber and less cultured.
I am starting to really think that being governed by an AI maybe is not a bad idea as long as no human can control this AI.
I don't think that the problem lies with the commission. If we had a Senate like the US or if Parliament decided to introduce new laws then nothing would really be different. They would still make these boneheaded decisions that are unattached to reality.
Those who wield power today have absolutely and completely forgotten just how brittle power is. They feel absolutely untouchable, and their self-serving remits are absolutely normalised to them.
Which is to say, this trajectory typically ends in violent revolt. You can only continue with edicts if you have complete control over all of the apparatuses of state power, and have a police state. If you rely on the illusion of power (policeman in your head, etc.), as most western democracies do, then a rude awakening awaits.
Demagoguery seems like a wise tactic until you’re upside down on a fence with your balls in your mouth.
So don’t fret. The pendulum will swing a few more times, but the bob will pop off the end of its tether and bounce under the awkward sofa of revolutionary change soon enough.
> I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted.
That. I get the local newspaper, and I am not sure if I have seen any report of Chat Control at all in the last few weeks.. If it does get mentioned at all, it is usually a 5-10 line paragraph :|
You are missing historical perspective - listen to recordings of western political leaders from the 70’s - whether good or evil, left or right, it is obvious they are clever, talented people in their prime years.
To have someone like Trump, Biden or Boris Johnson I charge would be unthinkable. We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.
Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career. (You age to consider all career paths, not just becoming president).
In China it’s a high status career, and the results speak for themselves.
Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.
And then you wind up with the mirror-image problem of ambitious and avaricious people using politics as a path for their own advancement at the expense of others.
Why not both, if both were on the table? I.e. incentivizing competent people to seek office, while decentralizing power and properly constraining the reach of any single office.
And they never will because they insist on paying peanuts. The government is stuck on a lots of stupid people model when they need to be on a few smart people model. That's why they can't execute on complex projects and need to always contract it out to the private sector.
>> We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.
>> Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career.
>> Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.
I very much resonate with this. Also, with concerns that the opposite might just be as bad: I could name en European, western country of several dozen million people governed by (downright) a career, borderline pyscho narcisist career politician. How do we keep -that- from happening?
It is easy to tune in to their frequency: just be an increadibly lazy pretentious figure with no talent to do real job that produces value that people are willing to pay for.
From that perspective writing a short legal paper quickly that facks up the life of everyone is much more logical than catching criminals. The latter one needs some work, also some brain to do.
>It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own
This has made me realize that there is little difference in living in a "free" society compared to "unfree". It didn't get to be that way because of morals or sound reasoning. It ended up that way because of dumb luck in the past that and enough propaganda cemented it. That's it.
Either way, what matters is what you're allowed to do now and in the close future. Bets are off for everything else. Our societies aren't governed by what the right thing to do is.
Being delusional, I would say that the only reason for the EU existence is to pass legislation that would apply to the whole EU, that would not be possible to pass even in a single country.
That's why the EU is structured in such a way that unelected and irresponsible people are given such enormous power over sovereign countries.
Previously, I thought it's about peace in Europe, more freedom for the people, but after such legislation is enacted, the EU is no more than a way to enslave the whole continent and bring it to the state not a single European voted for.
I wonder how it can be legal to repeatedly undermine constitution and push or vote for later high-court-nullified laws and be allowed to repeat as if nothing was wrong with that. Like drunk driving forever. We ban counter-constitutional activities outside parliament and authorities. Why not inside?
What problem here would be solved by ratifying a constitution?
Like -- ISTM that the relevant property here is the ability of the courts to overturn ordinary legislation for incompatibility with basic human rights provisions. But the EU already has this. the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (which is pretty much a superset of the european convention on human rights) is incorporated into the Lisbon treaty, and all EU legislation must be compatible with it. EU courts have overturned legislation for incompatibility with the CFR, eg Digital Rights Ireland[0].
The collection of member state treaties is for ~all intents and purposes a constitution, just not in a single document, and without the word "constitution" at the top.
> That morass makes it difficult for the public to cleanly digest when something is blatantly unconstitutional
I'm not convinced that's a relevant issue here. For some parts of EU treaty law, sure, but here the context here is disapplying EU legislation that's incompatible with fundamental human rights. Those parts are all in one document in one treaty: the Charter of Fundamental Rights[0], which was incorporated into the Lisbon treaty.
(besides, whether in the EU, somewhere with a formal constitution like the US, or the UK, the vast majority of the work of figuring out whether something is in breach of treaty / constitutional provisions is always going to be analysing caselaw)
> A party in power will seek to nullify issues by putting forward and then defeating sham bills.
Presumably the three strikes would be for the politicians, e.g. if you have voted in favor of three bills that courts have subsequently found unconstitutional, you're barred from holding office.
> if you have voted in favor of three bills that courts have subsequently found unconstitutional, you're barred from holding office
Would you look at that, everyone who was passing court reform is now barred from office.
You’re looking for a cheat code to effort in government. It doesn’t exist. Power is ephemeral. The person in power is always more powerful than the person who just had it, almost by definition.
> Would you look at that, everyone who was passing court reform is now barred from office.
But then the population sees this, still wants court reform (now more than ever) and votes in new politicians to take it up. The new politicians haven't yet voted on anything and so can't be barred this way and the first bill they take up is court reform.
> You’re looking for a cheat code to effort in government.
I'm looking for checks and balances. Something outside of the whims of populism should cause politicians who repeatedly attempt to violate fundamental rights to suffer consequences.
Try a cooling-off period. Switzerland does it for referendums. Absent a super-majority, a bill needs a certain amount of time between initial and final approval.
We are looking for checks and balances for politicians acting against the interests of the populace. Without them a government is always one step away from tyranny.
The ultimate check is people voting for better politicians. Without this, no system of checks can do anything significant. No checks in the US will limit Trump and the republicans, if they get voted over and over again. No checks in France or Germany or Italy will limit the extreme right, if they keep getting more and more of parliament. Eventually they would be powerful enough to change the constitution, change judges and so on. No system of checks can stop Putin or Xi or the Taliban.
Checks are useful if people mostly vote right, but occasionally make mistakes. If you double down on the mistakes, you get the situation that it would be undemocratic for some rules made 100 years ago to stand in the way of what the majority of the population wants today.
Plus, who knows what are the "interests of the populace". Who can decide that? If the populace votes one way, you saying "they're voting against their interests so they should be prevented from getting what they want" is functionally equivalent to saying "what I want should be done and what others want should not, even if I am in a minority". I know it does not feel that way to you, but try to see it from the perspective of someone who disagrees with you.
In a democracy, the only possible arbiter of what should happen is the majority. Anything else is the tyranny you decry.
> certainly doesn't prevent politicians from voting for unconstitutional laws
At that point you no longer have a legislative body, but an advisory council to whomever it is that decides what votes are and aren’t punishable. (See: Iran, China, the Roman Principate, early parliamentary monarchies.)
Yes, it's subject to court review... Five years down the line. Meanwhile they will force member states to act according to it. If they refuse they will sue them!
>According to the Data Retention Directive, EU member states had to store information on all citizens' telecommunications data (phone and internet connections) for a minimum of six months and at most twenty-four months, to be delivered on demand to police authorities.
First passed: March 15, 2006
Came into force: May 3rd, 2006
The law was introduced in Romania, but a year later the constitutional court struck it down. In 2011 the European Commission sued Romania for not implementing the law and fined them for it. This forced Romania to sign a new law in 2012, which was also declared unconstitutional in 2014.
>On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid
And the kicker is that the UK has tried to implement a similar law domestically two more times.
It's only difficult because people keep voting for politicians willing to throw fundamental rights out the window. I don't think any solution exists in this circumstance. People want to vote for bad politicians but to get good results. Good luck designing a system that does that, and does not just discount what people vote for.
I mean e.g. the safe harbour scandal that EUGH nullified after a 10-year legal struggle. Was violating EU core values. That's as close to unconsitutional as one may get not having one. Then came privacy shield, another 10-year legal fight and groundhog day. You get the idea.
Should be a crime at this point. It’s so far away from a democratic process with all the bad faith arguments and closed door discussions that I don’t see how this doesn’t count as trying to destroy the freedom of millions of people.
This is a shortsighted kneejerk take to be honest. What about laws you agree with that get rescinded? What if a law that protects your privacy gets struck down, do you think the privacy advocates that made it happen in the first place "committed an illegal act and should be liable for it"?
I agree with 0-strikes. Elect officials should be under constant investigation for any form of nefarious behavior and they should be prosecuted as any citzen would be.
You make a good point, I was not clear at all on the scope of my statement. I am thinking about my own countries constitution. I am not familiar with UKs constitution [1], so I don't really know if "control chat" violates the UK's constitution or not. When I said "nefarious", I was in part referring to undermining a countries constitution, as it is illegal to do so. No, I think that proposing laws that clearly undermine the constitution should be stopped immediately at the time of proposal by the constitution itself. 0-strikes for the proposal. 0-strikes here was not meant to suggest the politician be thrown in jail or anything like that. But, I agree with you in that I was unclear.
Again, my statement above was poorly worded. This is what I meant by prosecuting for nefarious behavior: It is my belief that government behavior would be better kept in check if elect officials were under constant investigation for criminal acts. Society should have gauntness that their nation is being run by good actors. Those running our country should be legally obligated to be working towards making the society that they serve thrive, not using it as a platform for organized crime, influencing the outcomes of their personal investments, or traitorous behavior like ruining a nations economy to empower another nation.
Well, proposed laws would need to pass constitutionality test done by some constitutional court stuffed by legal field experts. If passed, no prosecution can occur.
I could be prosecuted for driving if the result is death of pedestrian for example. I still drive. So why our fucking "servants" are special?
> proposed laws would need to pass constitutionality test done by some constitutional court stuffed by legal field experts. If passed, no prosecution can occur
Then , presumably, you would need another, lesser court, to vet a bill before it reached the constitutional court.
Unfortunately this just creates another layer of abstraction and each layer adds myriad perverse incentives for power brokering and abuse.
It’s a very thorny problem that humanity has yet to solve, and is probably unsolvable until we can solve the “power opens opportunities for abuse of those powers “ problem.
The only ideal form of government is the benign and just king, which of course does not exist.
>"The only ideal form of government is the benign and just king, which of course does not exist."
This might work in very small society where said king can be quickly brought to senses if he pisses off enough people. Anything larger is fucked up no atter what we do.
Meh, it’s only a matter of time, assuming that superintlligence is achieved.
It will of course be sock puppeted throughout some hapless shmuck, but societies that are not effectively led by superintellignces will quickly become irrelevant footnotes in a sea of strategic superiority.
Yeah, meanwhile, you can't buy video games with too much blood in them now because the censorship ship has sailed. Banning the nazi salute and certain types of ideological publishing is treating the symptoms and not the disease. It doesn't fix the issue, and it involves a lot of collateral damage.
Germany has in fact abolished fundamental rights (i.e. free expression) in response to collective fear and guilt about WW2. It's an unforced own goal, just like the USA did to itself after 9/11. The worst possible response. It harms only those who shouldn't be harmed; German nazis will still be nazis quietly in basements, and everyone else in Germany who isn't a nazi is subject to media censorship. It's nonsense.
politicians don't propose law in the EU. appointed bureaucrats do. politicians get to vote on them eventually, but it'll get passed one way or another.
I mean nefarious behaviour, sure, but idk if you mean in any context or just this specific one.
That said, if they commit illegal acts they should be tried and convicted like any other civilians, if not with a more severe punishment because they are our leaders that set the example.
I attempted to clarify my statement in my response to sneak. I am concerned that if there are people in government acting nefariously, these bad actors are free to continue unchallenged. If that is what is happening, then I suspect that this flaw exists in many democracies, if not all of them. I am by no means an expert in government, but I believe that with the way things are currently structured those leading our nations are operating without sufficient checks and balances to ensure their good intent. I am talking about investigating every government leader with a utility to ensure they are acting favorably with respect to peace, order, and good government in perpetuity.
Democratically elected representatives are sovereign decision makers. They can vote and decide whatever they want. Constitutions interpreted by high courts can strike laws down only afterwards.
Democracy should lead to stupid laws if people are ignorant, stupid and easily led.
If we had direct democracy, this bill would have passed decades ago.
> If we had direct democracy, this bill would have passed decades ago.
this is an important point, rarely discussed.
Here on HN I noticed a strong adversion for EU and its politician, but I really doubt that here on HN many are aware of the opinions of the general population in EU.
Much worse laws would be in place if we had direct democracy, I am 100% confident that death penalty would be the first big come back, but also stricter immigration laws (intra-EU too) and a generalized increase in the length of penalties for petty crimes, just because people in EU are old and they believe a police state will make them safer.
edit: QED the comments show how people would make the EU a worse place. Lucky us they can't.
They simply took what's in their interest (for example immigration laws, like really EU was flooded by migrants, spoiler: it is not!) and discarded the things they don't think would happen, because people are like that: they do not think of unwanted consequences and when they happen (like the ban of intra-eu immigration, which would most likely happen, being entirely legal and very easy to stop, unlike the illegal immigration from outside the EU) it means that someone else (in this case I assume the progressists, that they would call communists) worked against it because they hate them and hate their people and traditions.
It's incredible how easy it is to prove that trusting the average Joe on long term planning of an entire sub continent leads to catastrophes.
EDIT 2: it's also incredible how disconnected people are on political matters, they have a split brain, that thing that Orwell named doublespeak.
The most extreme libertarians that scream about being deprived of their freedom to have encrypted chats where they exchange swastikas with their friends, are the most conservatives on all the social matters and are the same people that vote the same politicians that then propose the chat control for the sake of the children.
2009 Swiss minaret referendum. Amendment to article 72 of the Swiss Federal Constitution reads: "The building of minarets is prohibited."
It's completely nutty to put random token issue into the constitution. Its' just gigantic fuck you for Swiss citizens with ex-Yugoslavi or Turkish roots. It breaks all legal principles and does not work serve its intended purpose of "stopping creeping islamization". They even failed to define term "minaret". Minarets are not required in Islam and fundamentalist Wahabbi/Salafi sects don't even accept them.
All that said, I support 100% the right for the Swiss people to be idiot edgelords. That's what democracy is all about.
It’s because we aren’t actually nations of laws. There are certain groups in every nation (yes, even the ones you like or perhaps respect) who operate outside of the law as if it doesn’t exist.
The most popular “e2ee” messengers in use (WhatsApp, iMessage) are already clientside backdoored in this manner. Most people in most societies are already under this type of surveillance. This is just to tidy up the small loopholes like Signal etc.
iCloud Backup backs up the entirety of someone's iMessage history (or their endpoint iMessage sync keys, which equate to the same thing) each night to Apple without e2ee.
If you enable e2ee for iCloud/iCloud Backup, all of your iMessage traffic will still be escrowed, simply from the other end of all of your conversations because they still have iCloud e2ee turned off (because it's off by default).
If the endpoint sends the plaintext post-decryption to the middle transit service (Apple) in a way that is readable to that middle service (iCloud Backups contain complete iMessage history and are encrypted to Apple keys), then it's not e2ee. This is called "plaintext escrow".
Same goes for WhatsApp. It backs up its message history to iCloud or Google Drive, which are, in the usual case (99.9%+ of users) non-e2ee.
"clientside backdoored" is a vague statement, but they may mean e.g. Snowden's revelations that the NSA has secret backdoor access to the big tech companies.
> The most popular “e2ee” messengers in use (WhatsApp, iMessage) are already clientside backdoored in this manner.
No they are not. This is nonsense. The charitable interpretation is that you’re confusing the systems on iMessage that can voluntarily detect nudity and report it to you (but not the police or Apple) with the systems being proposed in TFA which have mandatory reporting to provider+police. The uncharitable interpretation is that you’re just making stuff up because it sounds good. Please don’t do either, it makes everyone worse off.
It's well documented that the complete iMessage history (if the "Messages in iCloud" feature is disabled) or the endpoint iMessage sync keys (if "Messages in iCloud" is enabled, the default), are included in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup which is non-e2ee and readable by Apple.
Approximately nobody has enabled e2ee for iCloud Backups (and approximately nobody wants to; they'd rather Apple be able to restore their photos and conversations when they've lost their phone and forgotten their password).
Each and every night when plugged in every iPhone by default makes sure that Apple receives an Apple-readable copy of all of the photos and iMessages (or iMessage cross-device sync keys) on the device.
It's not e2ee if the endpoint device escrows the plaintext. Apple and the FBI can read 99%+ of all iMessages in the world in near-realtime.
(This is because, in the usual case, the backup includes the "Messages in iCloud" cross-device endpoint synchronization keys, and Apple of course runs the sync servers that see the encrypted traffic. If you have Messages in iCloud turned off, the backup simply contains all of the iMessages directly, and Apple presumably only gets them once each 24h period when the iCloud Backup runs at night when plugged in and on wifi.)
The only case in which iMessage is e2ee is when both iMessage endpoints either have iCloud disabled, or both iMessage endpoints have iCloud Backup disabled, or both iMessage endpoints have iCloud Advanced Data Protection (backup e2ee) enabled. The moment you add an iPhone not so configured to the iMessage groupchat, the whole thing falls apart, because the defaults are to escrow the plaintext in a non-e2ee fashion.
Apple's lack of reliable security is practically all they're known for at this point. They can't even protect your notifications from warrantless surveillance[0], nor can they refuse to supply your encryption keys if they're demanded[1].
You wanna talk about making stuff up? How are you possibly able to say that the iPhone doesn't have clientside backdoors when you don't have any source code to back that claim up? You are the one making stuff up because it sounds good; Apple's concerted efforts to undermine their own security features is well-documented and even exists by Apple's own admission.
Saying “everyone knows these products are backdoored” and then supporting your claim with “well, they’re closed source” is a ridiculous thing to do. Please stop.
Please stop? I just cited two credible sources on either side of the backdoor. It's one thing if you don't want to acknowledge what's happening, it's another thing to publicly deny it. If you've got any concrete evidence that Apple does not furnish backdoors in their products, now is a good time to show it. Otherwise I see no rational reason for anyone to assume Apple products are totally secure.
I'm really convinced that this should be done in a two-phase rollout.
In the first phase, every civil servant must use (be affected by) the system, as well as politicians (including their families). Basically everyone who gets a salary or pension paid by normal citizens.
Also, every piece of software used by the government, or providers, which is related to this policy, must be open sourced, and attempts at finding security related issues or bugs in general by anyone must not be considered an illegal activity, but considered a helpful activity.
If they are ok with this for five years, and no unfixable problems or possibilities of misuse are found, then it can be applied to the rest of the population.
After all, one must assume that child predators are also among civil servants and politicians. It would enable the measurement of the success of this policy.
Like guns for civilians. Nobody should have one, except the Politician body guard.. I am not advocating for guns in Europe! it is just an example. We can use the example with private health insurance, private schools and so on.. it is more like to exemplify the "Do what I say, don't do what I do" kind of politics
Except that civilians CAN have guns, they just need - just like police and military - a background check, training, certifications and permits. Police and military can't take their guns home, anyway. On paper.
It's interesting how this isn't a left-right issue. Both the more populist left and the more populist right oppose this, it originates from our elderly-home technocrats whom are clinging to power, like von der Leyen.
IMO, saying it originates from elderly-home technocrats really downplays the role of lobbyists who want to peddle their surveillance tech.
In this case, Ashton Kutcher.
Except the intel community doesn't need a law. Nice to have maybe. But if you think those are people who let little things like laws stop them from doing what they believe they need to do, you're being a bit naive.
Well, obviously everyone is against child abuse. If you are not for this kind of governmental regulation of all communications you are FOR CHILD ABUSE. And that makes your opinion irrelevant.
/s
The power of government + media, both nearly captured by unaccountable interests, has me worried. Does everyone remember the 'soft rollout' of Total Information Awareness back in 2002? There was even a logo for the proposed new government program (US). They have not given up on this for a single minute.
The way to win a war, is to demotivate and demoralize a population, not win a battle or destroy an army, but to make it so that the army never mobilizes.
Look how demotivated and demoralized everyone in the EU is becoming. I really wonder why that is.....
Perhaps they do not. Perhaps this was proposed with the goal that it will be rejected, so Germany and others can say:
"Look how much we care about your privacy!"
And then they scan in a clandestine manner. I do not trust any of these privacy apps, especially if certain people always try to discredit PGP.
Or it was proposed because some MP needed something on his resume. Or they want to tie up the resources of freedom advocates so that they do not work on even bigger issues.
More context: this was written back before the first iteration of chat control got turned down by European Parliament, and even links to that revision. A few details has changed since then -- still it's basically the same thing, although now you need to opt in, otherwise you won't be able to send images and videos. Allegedly, it could be passed by European Council tomorrow.