Current Events > The EU is set to unveil a mass surveillance proposal on Wednesday

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-commission-presents-mass-surveillance-plan-on-may-11

Currently, it is legal in both the US and the EU for companies like Google and Facebook to voluntarily scan your messages and posted content for illegal activity. With the alleged goal of protecting children, the proposal for mandatory chat control would make it a requirement for all companies that provide e-mail and chat to scan all correspondence (included secure, encrypted correspondence) for child abuse with automated tools and report any matches to police.

Opponents of chat control--including privacy advocates, advocates for abuse victims and marginalized people, and politicians--have pointed a number of serious flaws with these ideas:

1. It is unlikely the police and the government only wish to scan all messages for child abuse (or that this is even the primary purpose). It will inevitably be expanded to include other crimes or undesirable ideas.
2. Existing message scanning is a black box, but from what data there is, it doesn't seem to be very effective. On other pages, Mr. Breyer cites data suggesting a great deal of what gets looked at by the authorities is already completely legal. In the United States, details about the processing of such data beyond raw numbers of "matches" being reported by companies are simply not available, allegedly because increased transparency would help criminals evade justice.
3. If existing message scanning and chat control don't work well, expanding it severely will increase the amount of garbage police have to sift through, reducing harm reduction for actual victims.
4. Eliminating private communications comes with a host of ramifications, not least of which is making vulnerable people less safe.

Bills like EARN IT that ultimately aim to do something similar to mandatory chat control are waiting in the wings in the United States Congress. This is an issue that is a danger for the entire world, especially amidst the impending loss of reproductive rights with the repealing of Roe v. Wade. I don't know how many Europeans post here on GameFAQs, but please read up on this issue and do what you can. Don't be fooled the rhetoric. Message scanning isn't mean to help children or the vulnerable, it is meant to help governments and police gain more power.

Do you need a loicense for your Telescreen?

Not good when the entire world is racing towards far right tyranny

Many of these laws will still be on the books after the governments turn into dictatorships and will be used against people who might right now be voting for said laws. That's why I hate people who say "I got nothing to hide" when talking about these laws. Maybe in the future you WILL have something to hide. Like if you are a liberal and one day spreading liberal ideas is a crime

Bump

>attaches zip file of the plain text email I want to send with a password

hmm

What is it about becoming a politician that makes you think thoughtcrime is awesome

Outlawing protests and engaging in mass surveillance? No red flags there.

I wonder how long it will take Boris to claim that is why we had Brexit, despite him wanting to do this anyway.

Pretty awful though. And just awful that people are often happy for things like this. Just baffling that they are happy to give up rights so eagerly.

Between this and the US's new Ministry of Truth governments are really coming out swinging for full control of the internet aren't they?

s0nicfan posted...

Between this and the US's new Ministry of Truth governments are really coming out swinging for full control of the internet aren't they?

One saving grace is that the UK has failed repeatedly in trying laws of their own like this. Pushed it through and had to scrap it numerous times after realising was no way to actually implement it so I can only hope the same applies for this.

Funkydog posted...

One saving grace is that the UK has failed repeatedly in trying laws of their own like this. Pushed it through and had to scrap it numerous times after realising was no way to actually implement it so I can only hope the same applies for this.

Wasn't the UK one of the first countries to push laws like this though? The whole thing about the comedian being arrested for teaching his pug to nazi salute as a joke, or the police group in London who hunt down people who make racist Facebook posts? The UK has kind of been at the forefront of policing the internet.

s0nicfan posted...

Wasn't the UK one of the first countries to push laws like this though? The whole thing about the comedian being arrested for teaching his pug to nazi salute as a joke, or the police group in London who hunt down people who make racist Facebook posts? The UK has kind of been at the forefront of policing the internet.

We sadly have, yeah. They've seen success in those ways sadly, but also failures in the more heavy handed efforts to censor/restrict content.

Funkydog posted...

Pushed it through and had to scrap it numerous times after realising was no way to actually implement it so I can only hope the same applies for this.

Voluntary message and upload scanning already exists, it just seems to work poorly and be a completely opaque process. There is nothing particularly infeasible about forcing companies to add some kind of automated scanning plugin or something to their chat boxes or their e-mail systems. It will just eliminate privacy, massively increase police and government power, and vastly increase the number of false positives, along with creating a framework that can easily be used to suppress dissent and political unrest later if need be (I'd be inclined to think this is the actual reason).

They don't need it to make sense, be fair, help anyone, or even work well at all. They just want the power and are using child abuse as a shield to get it.

It'll be interesting to see what is actually in the unveiled proposal Wednesday (assuming it doesn't get pushed back again). I don't know how often these things die over in Europe after being unveiled, but hopefully it gets tons of protest and no action.

Every time something is passed to "protect children", it seems two things are guaranteed:
-erosion of personal freedoms; and
-not a single child is protected.

Hope wider society wises up to this one day

DEKMStephens posted...

Every time something is passed to "protect children", it seems two things are guaranteed:
-erosion of personal freedoms; and
-not a single child is protected.

-at least one of the major backers of the legislation turns out to be a kiddie-diddler.