The disguised return of EU Chat Control

We should also try to minimize the number of useful idiots who are genuinely concerned about children's safety. There are two excuses being used to push these surveillance laws: CSAM scanning and content moderation for children. These are bad excuses and we need to call them out as such in every conversation.

CSAM scanning ignores the actual problem, which is the process by which CSAM is created. The root problem is the trafficking of children in physical space, not the tools used to transmit and store child porn, which are general purpose tools used to transmit and store anything. Our efforts and resources, as a matter of priority, should be spent on preventing children from being trafficked in the first place.

The under-16 social media ban ignores the actual problem of parental responsibility. We could implement configurable IP filters on the device itself at the OS level, with the setting being protected by a password parents can set, and this could be done completely offline. It would be way easier to implement and will work better than any of these remote solutions. And as a matter of principle: it is the responsibility of parents to decide how to raise their own children.

We can. It’s just easier to throw a wrench in a legislative process than to start it. (By design.)

New rules lead to profitable business opportunities (and future lobbies), incumbents get to entrench their positions using the new rules, and people get stockholm syndrome and just end up accepting the new normal.

Modern representative democracy is Parkinson's law at work. Government is the purest form of bureaucracy and monopoly. Thus, it finds ways to grow itself every year regardless of what happens.

Someone should tell Congress.

If a website which otherwise wouldn’t censor you begins to censor you because of threats from foreign nations, that’s a foreign nation pressuring an American company into suppressing rights of American citizens.

That’s a foreign nation imposing on your rights. In the past that used to require an invasion, so it was a bit more obvious what was happening, but the result is still the same.

Yes it’s through a website, which is owned by a company, which technically speaking owes you nothing.

In the digital age though, where are you going to use your speech, if not on a website?

What you (and others) are doing is trying to reduce the significance of a major transgression over a minor technicality. Way to miss the forest for trees.

The EU can stuff it on this one. And I supported (still support!) the GDPR.

But the near daily proposals getting tossed out in their desperate attempt to turn their countries into daycare centers is just annoying to people trying to build things for other adults.

Is this true? Lots of countries with high living standards have high taxes. It doesn't need to solve every problem but it does help solve the problem of one unelected person holding too much power and influence.

> What's plan B? Lower the threshold to a million dollars?

1B = 1000M. I think thats high enough. Don't see why you need to make it 1000x smaller to try and make a point.

The sad reality is that the world has a nonzero percentage of power-hungry narcissists. We need governments that are more democratic and robust. We all know that the current government processes are broken and corrupted.

TLDR: Billionaires hold political power.

To use the recent US shutdown as an example. Passing a budget is like one of the basic requirements of governing. If the current government cannot accomplish that, it should immediately dissolve and elections be held. Every single position in power at the time, gone, the whole thing gets re-elected because they have proven that the current group cannot adequately govern.

The ability to recall needs to work similarly. Vote should be able to be initiated by the people at anytime, and a successful vote means the government dissolves and new elections are held.

We could also have a "cooling off" period after a piece of legislation (like chat control) fails. It failed the first time, it should not be able to be immediately reintroduced whether in the same or a different form. There should be some sort of cooling off period where that piece of legislation (or its goals) cannot be reintroduced for x number of years.

I think that would empower ill-conceived (and/or ill-willed) populist & short term movements, with everyone in constant fear of being "un-vote bombed" by armies of easily led, and likely make the lobbying problem worse.

Of course initially we would have to learn, that changing our minds too often will lead to things not getting done at all. And it is doubtful, that a lot of people are even capable of becoming informed and reflecting beings, not to be swayed by a hip populist radical, and thus causing shit to happen. Also the sheer number of issues and policies would be so many, that most people couldn't make up their mind on everything. But that's OK, since people can raise awareness and simply vote later, when they became aware. Another issue would be what the choices are that people have on the platform. How to give all relevant opinions as choices? How to know what is relevant? Or can voters apply for adding a new opinion? But then who grants the right to add a choice? How to prevent spam?

So there certainly are huge issues with the idea. But maybe, over time, we would develop into politically reasonable societies and politicians would have to fear the opinion of the people, because one scandal uncovered, and they could end up kicked out tomorrow. Maybe it could also better designed, so that there is some minimum time between being able to change ones stance about something. Or some maximum of policies one can have an opinion about per day.

Even initially to have such a platform without real political consequences of voting, would be super interesting, because you could lookup what the current opinions of the people are.

> How does society resolve this kind of abuse of the democratic process? It is a dynamic that is repeated in many areas.

Relating our experience in the US, we planned for exactly this, it went okay for a while, until it didn't. The answer to parent is "do this but a little better" :-)

I remember a few years ago, being shocked to see that over 50% of applicants for a software engineering role applied directly from their smartphones. So it's not even just normies who see their phone as "the computer".

you only need 50%+1 to appoint the commission, but 66% to vote them out

so practically impossible

For 5000 years there were no surveillance cameras or ways to surveil communications! (other than the little that was said by mail)

“Saying you don’t need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." — Edward Snowden

It’s a very privileged position to believe you have nothing to hide and not be worried about the consequences. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky. Many people live in fear for their freedom and lives for elementary things they can’t change and shouldn’t have to hide, such as one’s sexual orientation. We should think of them as well.

The shit has hit the fan about a decade ago already and not calming down at all, but intelligence gathering capability of secret services of all EU countries are being continiously degraded, because everything is E2E by default and money flows are obscured too.

Nobody likes to see shit being on fire and having all the dashboards down.

Another happening happens, the services are asked why they didn't prevent it or report it being likely -- what do they answer? "We can't read the damn messages, so we can't know if there is a cell that plans to do it again".

This is their best chance for them to enact mass surveillance, before the hoi polloi crack and finally get out of their couches.