I think the challenge for society here is not to simply reject attempts like this, but how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.
I think the challenge for society here is not to simply reject attempts like this, but how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.
The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says otherwise.
Which is a bit complicated here, as the EU has no real constitution and this 'law' (really a regulation) is a blatant violation of the constitutions of countries that did choose to establish secrecy of correspondence.
> The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says otherwise
And the willingness and ability to enforce it. The current iteration of ChatControl is pushed by Denmark, which is at present the President of the Council of the European Union. The Danish Constitution itself enshrines the right to privacy of communication [0], but this is not stopping Denmark from wanting to ratify ChatControl anyway.
[0]: https://danskelove.dk/grundloven/72
Yes but unfortunately courts are mostly reactive, not proactive
Sometimes there are some mechanisms to block unconstitutional (or other regulation) laws from passing but they're limited
Not sure how that would apply at the EU level or even at the Danish level
> Yes but unfortunately courts are mostly reactive, not proactive
I think it’s always the case, no? Unless the unconstitutional law is approved, there is nothing to dispute in court.
In the Netherlands we have the “Eerste kamer” (first chamber, also called Senate) that is responsible for verifying that the proposed laws are in accordance with our “constitution”. They are elected of band with the normal government which should ensure that no single party is able to steamroll laws through both chambers.
In theory the "Bundespräsident" in Germany is supposed to only ratify laws that are in accordance with the constitution, but I don't think it happens that he refuses to do this.
Correct. Imagine the number of challenges in court based on mere rumor of a law.
> but this is not stopping Denmark from wanting to ratify ChatControl anyway.
What the TLDR of the motivation behind this? Is it just politicians playing to their base (think of the children) or corporate lobbying. or religion, etc?
Seems to me that the negatives of passing something like this are super obvious and dystopian.
I suspect it's a mix of many Danish politicians' own authoritarian tendencies/ambitions and corporate lobbying, though I have no proof of the latter when it comes to ChatControl specifically.
Generally speaking, there is a lot of dark money in Danish politics, and the EU has repeatedly flagged Denmark as a country lacking in transparency with regards to corporate lobbying: https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/eu-kritik-af-danmark-puster-...
Generally speaking, the Danish government also tends to behave in authoritarian ways. E.g., Denmark has wilfully violated EU regulations on data retention for many, many years. In 2021, a Danish court ruled that the Danish Ministry of Justice could continue its mass surveillance practices even though they were (and still are) illegal under EU law: https://www.information.dk/indland/2021/06/justitsministerie...
Currently Denmark is also trying to leverage its position as the President of the Council of the EU to legalise, on a EU-wide level, the form of data retention that Denmark has been illegally practising: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
Interesting. I am not expert on politics of Denmark, so my question is: is this push universal across political parties or it’s a feature of a specific political block that rules for the past X years and consistently worked in this direction?
There was another thread on specifically our minister of justice, with comments that touch on the historical aspect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45248802
Generalized, this looks to me like a question about why humans sometimes get hell-bent about some idea and become blind to the side effects and ignorant when it comes to risk management.
Sometimes it could be malice or personal gains. Sometimes, I think, it could be just a strong bias towards some idea that causes a mental blindness. Such blindness can happen to anyone, at any level of power (or lack thereof), politicians are not unique in this - the only difference is the scope of impact due to the power they have. And we aren't particularly filtering them against such behavior - on the contrary, I feel that many people want politicians to have an agenda and even cheer when they put their agenda above the actual reality, any consequences be damned.
If I was leading another western nation I would be looking at the right wing takeover of the US government in terror.
For sure. Does anyone want Trump to know everything you write? Erdogan if Turkey ever does enter the EU?
EU has the Charter of Fundamental rights which is a part of the Treaty of Lisbon which is the constitutional basis of EU: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Right...
In the charter, the protection of personal data and privacy is a recognized right. So chat control is also probably against the EU law.
Both the right to privacy and the right to protection of personal data appear to have pretty big exemptions for government.
The right to private communications was modified by the ECHR to give an exemption for prevention of crime/protection of morals/etc.[1] and the right to protection of personal data exempts any legitimate basis laid down by law[2].
I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of Chat Control that passed legal muster. Perhaps a reduced version of Chat Control, say, demanding secret key escrow, but only demanding data access/scans of those suspected of a crime rather than everyone.
Legal rulings also seem to indicate that general scanning could be permitted if there was a serious threat to national security, so once a system to allow breaking encryption and scanning is in place, then it could be extended to what they want with the right excuse.
[1] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/7-respect-privat...
[2] https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/8-protection-per...
> I imagine they'd be able to figure out some form of Chat Control that passed legal muster. Perhaps a reduced version of Chat Control, say, demanding secret key escrow, but only demanding data access/scans of those suspected of a crime rather than everyone.
Isn't that pretty much excatly how it is done in Russia, which was ruled by ECHR to be illegal[0]?
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-230854%...
I'm not familiar with EU law, but reading Title II article 7 and 8 makes me feel this could be an optimistic interpretation of what the Treaty of Lisbon guarantees. I'm sure the supporters of chat control would love to argue something like "ChatControl respects the private communications of an individual by protecting how the data is processed to ensure only the legitimate basis of processing the data is incurred by the law" in court.
I would hope the EU courts would disagree, but I'm not sure if anyone can say until it's tested directly.
Even the EU council's legal service thinks the law as-proposed is probably incompatible with Article 7 and 8:
> The CLS concludes that, in the light of the case law of the Court of Justice at this stage, the regime of the detection order, as currently provided for by the proposed Regulation with regard to interpersonal communications, constitutes a particularly serious limitation to the rights to privacy and personal data protection enshrined in Article 7 and 8 of the Charter.
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8787-2023-I...
I think there are variants of the ChatControl proposal which were clearly problematic, but the different variations of the proposal try to toe the line since. This report talks to the 2022 era proposal.
As shown on the other side of Atlantic that is worthless when no one upholds the constitution.
I think of constitution as a contract between the citizens and the state and the (judiciary?)
Like, constitution both defines the rights of citizens and the limits of those rights and the same goes for the states.
I feel as if the creators of constitutions think that it is a set of checks and balances...
Just as if how a citizen violates something written in the constitution, the state can punish it.
In the same manner, I believe that the constitution thought that if the state violates some constitutional right of citizen, then citizens can point that out and (punish?) the state as the legitimacy of state is through that constitution which they might be breaking...
I concur (fancy word for believe which I wanted to share lol) you are talking about america. The thing is, revolutions are often messy and so much things are happening in america that I think that people are just overwhelmed and have even forgotten all the stuff happening in the past... Like tarrifs were huge thing, then epstein news then this I think autism thing by trump.
Like, the amount of political discourse is happening less and idk, oh shit, just remembered the uh person deporting thing which was illegal which was done anyway
If these things happened in isolation, they would all have huge actions against govt. but they are happening back to back and so everyone's just kinda silent I think, frankly I believe overwhelmed.
I believe that just as in nepal, in america everyone is whining on social media but nobody's taking action. Nepal blocked social media and so people in nepal were kinda forced to take action irl and it worked kinda nice in the end tbh
So maybe its social media which is enabling this thing.... which is funny to me as I am doing the same thing right now lol
All for sweet internet points tho.
A large portion of the population either does not believe or does not mind the violations of our constitution to achieve their desired outcomes. As an American, it came as a surprise to me that we do not, in fact, have broadly shared values about our system of governance. This year has been a devastating blow to my confidence in our democracy and the ability of people to govern themselves generally.
> This year has been a devastating blow to my confidence in our democracy and the ability of people to govern themselves generally.
The latter has been on my mind for quite some time.
The logical conclusion of "people can't govern themselves generally" kind of gestures at religion as a solution - after all, if man cannot govern themselves, why not rely on a higher power to manage them?
Of course, the problem with that point of view is that from the atheistic perspective, there is no higher power, and from the agnostic perspective, whatever higher power there is is inscrutable and beyond our ken.
This then leads me to the conclusion that religion is ultimately a creation of men, and are thus prone to the same power-corrupting vices as any other institution created by men.
Except that leaves no real solution the problem of the governance of people. And it's a quandary I see no realistic chance of escape from.
I agree to the same thing to a somewhat degree from another standpoint / a discussion worth tapping into.
Its not that the logical conclusion is "people can't govern themselves generally"
Its that, we have created a system which incentivizes corruption or basically evil things for the most part from TOP TO BOTTOM partially influenced by biological factors beyond our control.
Sure, one answer to the "people can't govern themselves generally" is to decentralize the power.
I live in India and I loathed my political system thinking that it wasn't good and I really appreciated american political system but the more I think about it, fundamentally Indian political system is one of the best actually.
It has 3 levels of decentralization with Strong Right to information and uh multi party system with Even Universal basic income which I came to know from an american which is a real shocker I know.
Yet I still see people begging and there being some chaos, My logical answer to it is corruption from TOP TO BOTTOM which I observed atleast.
I sort of believe that the same thing happens everywhere to be honest if that can make sense...
Like, there is corruption and human evils which is what people select in real life anonymous things as compared to true morality that one can reason through. Simply for one's own profit.
It also might be one of those debates that India might have a good political system but simply the people don't have enough money or something and they want more or everyone does it which is a common answer that I actually hear.
I believe that the reason why people can't govern themselves generally is that there is a biological answer to it in the sense that for people to govern themselves, we would prefer /need an altruist society and in an altruist society, and how the genes which favour a bit of evil in altruist society might reproduce more and spread sort of thus creating an equilibra of sorts and combining with that the idea on how interlinked/interinfluential each of us is to one other through language.
It was a catharsis to me, The answer might be depressing. But its fundamentally logic. Life just sort of happened and then it got way too focused on spreading itself / the one which did survived and boom that's biology which then gets to this political thing...
Like it was sort of meant to happen y'know? atleast that's my current understanding of it. Would love to discuss tho.
> As an American, it came as a surprise to me that we do not, in fact, have broadly shared values about our system of governance.
It shouldn't, America is two very distinct nations. The shape and nature of those nations vary wildly in classical Baudrilliardian sidewinding progression, but it's rooted in the very early history of British North America. Two distinct primogenitor colonies and societies, Jamestown and Plymouth. Founded for different reasons, in different contexts, by different people. Understanding the disparity is key to understanding a great deal about America. This divide has always persisted. Jefferson was of Tidewater, Hamilton was of Yankeedom. Democrats vs Whigs. Dixie vs Yankeedom. This split persists in history, and is much the reason why America is ostensibly a two party system. Even if the regional divide is not as hard and fast as it once was, even if the matters in which they differ change radically over time, the divide itself will always persist. It's wrapped up in the pre-revolutionary context the country was founded on. America will always be two countries in a trenchcoat, two echoes of wildly different cultures set against each other for dominance. You should always be keen to remember that. The union isn't of 13 distinct colonies, but two distinct cultures always in tension. It's a fundamental structure within our larger cultural blueprint.
That's a great insight and one for which I thank you for pointing out as I learned something new thanks to you today.
My question is whether two different cultures can in fact coexist with each other for a single system of governance.
Like, Why do we focus so much on our differences as a species that we forget how much common we are on literally everything.
What is a solution to this problem that's kinda impacting the world right now. America moves in pendulum in a political cycle completely 180'ing but yet at the same time, I feel like no real change is being made against lobbying/corruption which sort of infiltrates the world too.
Bernie sanders and now maybe zohran are the two democrats who are genuinely tryna do something for america which I deeply respect tbh. Yet there wasn't really a way for one to vote for them directly y'know?
Are these differences of cultures really that distinct to basically split a country in half in everything except the borders?
Was there no way of integrating them without having them idk being the way that they are right now?
I'm kinda struggling to understand how this relates to our makeup today. I can't find the thread.
What cultural group today is Jamestown and which is Plymouth?
I think a good introductory text on the deep nature of the divide in America is We Have the War Upon Us by William J. Cooper.
It's mostly a book about the civil war, but it introduces some post-revolution pre-war history and names. That gives you more resources to dig up. You should read as much as you can and form your own opinions on that.
I'm relatively well versed in "the divide" so to speak. But I'm trying to understand what you mean by the Plymouth and Jamestown split as it relates to our modern country today.
It seems like both the spirit of Plymouth and Jamestown are inside the big tent of the Republican party today. But that doesn't sound like what you intended it to mean. Or maybe it is?
That's the part I'm curious about; who is Plymouth and who is Jamestown in 2025 in your eyes?
Plymouth is harder to identify. It's not just the Puritans at Plymouth, nor exclusively New England. It's merely everything that came with the second colonization. The Dutch are a foundational part of Yankeedom. In fact, New York should probably be considered more foundational than Plymouth. You would be right to identify Jamestown with the modern GOP. Traditionally it was represented by the Democratic party, but I assume you're familiar with that.
I should note these geists extend far beyond legitimate political guise.
Of course I understood there were vast cultural and political differences causing tension. I just also believed that we had a shared system of fundamental values enshrined in the constitution and when push came to shove, we would all rally behind it. That's what I thought American patriotism meant; I genuinely thought I could count on Red voters to rabidly defend the constitution.
> I just also believed that we had a shared system of fundamental values enshrined in the constitution and when push came to shove, we would all rally behind it.
The US had a Civil War in the 19th century over the fear of the southern states that the northern states would not only refuse to continue to be complicit in the institution of slavery, but eventually end it.
The seceding states wrote slavery, as well as protections of the property rights of slave-owners, into their constitution.
After the war came the scaling back of Lincoln's planned reconstruction, sharecropping and Jim Crow. There are people alive today who remember segregation.
White supremacy is as American as apple pie.
The thing I find most interesting about your reply is how it demonstrates that we live in wildly subjective realities.
Specifically, how? GP's claims can be factually substantiated. Pick whichever you claim can't.
He isn't calling the claim subjective, but underlining what the claim posits entails that we live in subjective realities.
My read on the US is that it could be 10 or more, functional independant states, or a single massive mess, and US citizens wake up every day and commit themselves to the mess.
Right wingers will look you straight in the eye and tell you that they support suppression of gun rights and speech when it hurts their enemies. Their enemies often live many states away. I have seen the entire country flip on an issue just because the context changes.
The bloodless resolution would be to just agree to not hang out anymore. But I think citizens of a once empire would feel somehow aggrieved to lose that empire. So you guys are going to have to figure this out after spilling a bunch of blood.
The constitution provides no mechanism for dissolution or secession.
Well thats it then. If it isnt written in the documentation, it cant be done.
> I concur (fancy word for believe which I wanted to share lol) you are talking about america.
Just a heads up but concur means "agree", not "believe"
It was a grave tragedy and a miscalculation from my side.
An error that should be discussed for generations :sob: /jk
IN all fairness though, I don't know why I wrote concur, I just thought of it and thought it meant believe...
What would be a fancier word of believe if I may ask ya that you would suggest me to use..
Also I am sorry that I made a mistake tbh, I hope ya get it and thanks for correcting me!
I assent to that statement
Made me have a good ol chuckle / laugh.
Kinda liked it, so thanks lol
You are most definitely not right. The EU charter of fundamental rights is an agreement that holds legal binding. The institutions who are supposed to uphold the charter are CJEU, European Commission, FRA, NHRIs.
The people who wrote this proposal said it themselves - "Whilst different in nature and generally speaking less intrusive, the newly created power to issue removal orders in respect of known child sexual abuse material certainly also affects fundamental rights, most notably those of the users concerned relating to freedom of expression and information."
This proposal is illegal. The fact that CJEU at least haven't issued a statement that this is illegal tells you everything you need to know about the EU and its democracy.
> The accepted solution is to have a constitution that says otherwise.
Constitutions don't enforce themselves. The US constitution has a crystal clear right to bear arms but multiple jurisdictions ignore it and multiple supreme court rulings and make firearm ownership functionally impossible anyway. Free speech regulations have, thankfully, been more robust.
The only thing that stops bad things happening is a critical mass of people who believe in the values the constitution memorializes and who have enough veto power to stop attempts to erode these values.
The US has such a critical mass, the gun debate notwithstanding. Does the EU have enough people who still believe in freedom?
> The US constitution has a crystal clear right to bear arms
It looks like it was drafted by an ESL speaker. It's by far the worst-drafted amendment, grammatically speaking:
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It's not even a valid English sentence, and it certainly never bothers to define "Arms." Not to mention that, as written, it appears to make it illegal for me to tell you that you cannot come to my house with a gun, because that's me infringing your right. It doesn't constrain Congress. It constrained anyone who wants to take away your right to bear arms.
Sheer lunacy as written. Ungrammatical and implies some insane shit.
But no, you're right, it's crystal clear. Much like how the First Amendment says
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
which in crystal clear terms makes it legal to mass-distribute child pornography. To prohibit it would restrict the freedom of the press.
It also implies that the militia is regulated.
Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly
No, it doesn't. I said it's grammatically incorrect, not orthographically incorrect. (It's arguably correct orthographically based on the incorrect grammar.)
> [Noun], being [clause], [grammatically correct sentence]
is objectively incorrect English grammar.
Eliding the "being" appositive, you're left with
> [Noun], [sentence].
Unless you're talking to the noun (as in "Hey, you, the well regulated militia! Did you know that the right to keep and bear arms . . . "), it's not grammatically correct.
Ok, get a 2/3 majority of the House and Senate to approve a proposed edit removing those commas, and then get 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve it.
Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
Comma rules change over time.
But the text of the Constitution only changes through amendments.
That said, the effective meaning of the Constitution is "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is."
And to a degree, given the power to impeach Supreme Court justices, "whatever a majority of the Supreme Court agrees it is, and with Congress sufficiently on board to not impeach sufficient justices to force a shift in the balance of the Court."
I'm responding to:
>>> Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly
>> Until then, the commas are officially part of the text.
> Comma rules change over time.
Maybe the equivalence of the sentence at drafting, today is without commas?
That depends on the opinions of 9 very specific individuals. How the text and its commas might be interpreted by you or I today is irrelevant.
But you chose to tell us about your interpretation. :-)
I had less the current legal interpretation and more the meaning at the time of writing down, as it would reveal itself in current text, in mind, which is relevant to this argument.
I see the conversation differently.
KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.
GLdRH said "Remove the first and last comma and the sentence works splendidly".
I said that modifying the literal text requires going through the amendment process.
You said "Comma rules change over time."
I reiterated that the literal text does not change except through the amendment process, and also noted that fundamentally the literal words don't matter much as it's up to a majority of the Supreme Court how to interpret any of it.
You then brought up modern language usages of commas.
I replied that how you or I today interpret the text is irrelevant because only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
At no point in this conversation have I expressed a specific interpretation of the text, so your indication that I chose to tell the discussion about my interpretation seems weird and maybe you're misreading usernames somewhere along the way.
> maybe you're misreading usernames
Sorry for that.
> KPGv2 pointed out the phrasing of the 2nd amendment is not clear.
I thought me and GLdRH replied to KPGv2 stating that the 2nd amendment isn't valid grammar and this results in some of the unclarity.
When you have this:
, then when you want to discuss meaning issues due to grammar rules, you need to use 18th century grammar. I perceived GLdRH to use 21th century grammar to encode the same sentence. The literal text does not need to be modified, since it uses 18th century grammar rules. Only when you want to parse it with 21th century grammar rules, you need to preprocess it to adjust the grammar first. This preprocessing doesn't need to be written back, since the grammar rules of the text haven't changed. We are only circumventing the parser not supporting the texts grammar.> only the Supreme Court's opinion matters.
This is purely about syntactic issues, not about semantics. The Supreme Court applies also semantics, such as the other legal system definitions of the time. I wasn't replying to that aspect.
I'm not here to argue about the right to bear arms in the USA, but the 2nd amendment is anything but crystal clear in its language.
Seems pretty clear to me, although I'm neither an american nor a lawyer.
i think making your argument on free speech grounds would be stronger
How so? My point is that US constitutional protections on firearm ownership have undeniably eroded. The presence of text on the page did not prevent this erosion. I'm using gun rights as an example of a situation in which text granting a right becomes irrelevant if people stop believing in the values behind the text.
People do believe in freedom of speech in the US, thankfully, even if they've stopped defending gun rights in some places.
EU free speech protections are in the same position gun rights are in the US, and for surprisingly similar reasons.
This simply isn't true. If anything, constitutional protections have dramatically expanded since the amendment was passed.
This is because until the 14th Amendment and the incorporation doctrine, the Bill of Rights only restricted the Federal government, not the States. Prior to the that, state and local governments could (and did) restrict not just firearms, but other rights as well.
Hell, the Bill of Rights still hasn't been fully incorporated, so for instance, despite the 7th Amendment stating otherwise, you don't have the right to a jury trial in civil cases in every state nor the right to indictment by grand jury (5th Amendment).
Of course, some states copied parts of the constitution into their own and had some form of protection, but it was by no means universal. Massachusetts even had a state church until 1833.
when you are talking to a european audience, they tend to be in favor of gun control so they don't care about erosion of those rights (like the people in the US who also favor eroding them, wording of the rules be damned)
HN is to a large extent a popularity contest, and people here are more in favor of free speech than guns. the US record on protecting free speech is very good.
> you are talking to a european audience, they tend to be in favor of gun control so they don't care about erosion of those rights
You have accidentally properly identified the european problem and precisely the reason that chat control will pass: shortsightedness. If people only rise up to protect rights "they need", soon no rights will be left.
In the EU you can have guns, you just must pass some tests, that you know how to use them and you need to store them in separate ways.
But guns are vastly insufficient in this century to overthrow the state, you basically only harm your fellow citizens with them.
Most of the erosion is done through court challenges.
Historically, courts have maintained that legislation is pursued under "good faith". This was the justification for not overturning ACA on the grounds of it being an unconstitutional tax: the lawmakers didn't mean to make it an unapportioned tax, even though it effectively is, so it's okay yall. Washington St just did this with income taxes on capital gains in direct violation of their state constitution a year or two ago.
Where I live, you cannot open carry. That is a direct violation of 2A, but the courts have said it's okay baby because it's not an undue burden to pay a fee and waste a day of your life. Pure nonsense. Just change the constitution for goodness sake.
Plenty of EU states already have a constitution in which this proposal would be de facto unconstitutional.
The issue is what is the European Commission willing to do in order to guarantee that fat contract check goes to Palantir or Thorn or whoever has the best quid pro quo of the day.
This is not Stasi this is Tech billionaires playing kings and buying the EC and Europol for pennies on the dollar and with it the privacy of virtually every citizen of zero interest for law enforcement or agencies.
For practical purposes the EU does have a constitution, it's just a messy collection of treaties rather than a single codified constitution (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu... for why).
isn't constitution easily changed by parlament?
Usually not "easily". I know Germany requires 2/3 majority.
fwiw, amending the US constitution generally requires a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress to propose the amendment, and then further ratification by 3/4 of the states make the amendment law. it's a fairly long process, and amendments sometime get bogged down and die in the 2nd phase.
(there is another process which calls for a convention, but such a convention would have broad powers to change many things and so far the "two sides" (US rules tilt toward two parties rather than more) have been too scared of what might happen to do that)
Ireland's Supreme Court decided in 1987 to make a referendum mandatory before they would ratify EU treaty amendments. Not that it mattered, because they got a "no" vote but their puppet masters wanted a "yes", so they just reran the referendum the following year...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-eighth_Amendment_of_t...
Only 59% turn out, and the vote won 67%. So in reality less than 40% of the population were for it.
I have vague memories of people saying that the treaty was indecipherable. The EU were like, "Here, vote yes for this big bag of 'misc', or else"
This wasn't the first time they reran a referendum for an EU treaty. They did it back in 2003!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_of_th...
If the UK wanted to avoid BREXIT all they had to do was look a few miles to the west for the knack.
I've commented this elsewhere, but rights in the US are generally much more absolute than here in Europe.
For example, in the EU you technically have the right to freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you say something that could offend someone.
Similarly rights to privacy are often ignored whenever a justification can be made that it's appropriate to do so.
I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK you don't even have a right to remain silent because the government added a loophole so that if you're arrested in a UK airport they can arbitrarily force you to answer their questions and provide passwords for any private devices. For this reason you often here reports of people being randomly arrested in UK airports, and the government does this deliberately so they can violate your rights.
> For example, in the EU you technically have the right to freedom of expression, but you can also be arrested if you say something that could offend someone.
So you actually don't have freedom of expression?
No offendings are not an expression. What do you express with them, poor anger management?
Your right to something ends were a right of someone else is violated. That's the case here.
> Your right to something ends were a right of someone else is violated. That's the case here.
Ah yes, that memorable trifecta: Life, Liberty, and the Right to Never Hear Mean Words.
Oral violence also has consequences. From invoking or reinforcing mental diseases over fear and isolation to blackmail and being socially judged on while being innocent. Do you accept random beatings when people feel like it on the street?
Oral violence is an oxymoron. It's dangerous to conflate words and violence because then words quickly become a justification for violence.
Why? How do you define violence? Harming people? Insults and false accusations can have much greater harm to a life then a broken leg.
> violence because then words quickly become a justification for violence
When you don't have a way to fight back and make something stop, without resorting to physical aggression, then your only way is to punch back. When the legal system allows you to fight back, then you can walk away, knowing you can call your lawyer or the police.
Insults cannot have greater harm than just about any physical injury. False accusations already have a legal recourse, as they're defamation.
Have you had a broken leg? When you're young it's an alright thing to deal with, when you're older it can be life altering (it might hurt forever or alter your gait). However most spontaneous violence doesn't result in broken legs but rather hits to the head which can very quickly end up at CTEs or other brain trauma.
In an equal society, you really don't want actual violence to be on the same spectrum as speech of any kind. One problem is that ~50% of the population has a massive natural advantage in the realm of actual violence. Would a husband beating his wife because of "violent words" she inflicted on him be ok under the "speech is violence" rubric?
Freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
"... expression, but you can also be arrested if you say something that could offend someone. ..."
You probably mean hate speech.
We have laws like that too in Canada. It is a good thing.
It all depends who’s defining “hate”. The people you like who are in charge today won’t be there in 20 years, and if any kind of extremism leaks in to society, you could find yourself unable to advocate for your beliefs without getting arrested.
I mean Canada's a pretty depressing example of how bad those laws can be abused.
How on earth are hate speech laws a good thing? Or did I miss a /s?
For example, the US government is trying to label any posthumous criticism of Charlie Kirk "Hate Speech". You can see how dangerous this could be when the hate-mongers get to decide what is considered hate speech.
Honestly, the current administration baffles me. There is so much activity that flies squarely against the constitution in a not at all subtle or clever way; just blatant, "I don't care."
It's one thing to be disruptive and enforce immigration law "by the books" but entirely separate to then go out of your way to not enforce it legally while at the same time violating or attempting to violate the constitution on pretty fundamental levels.
The only way I see to prevent the constant pushing is that every single time some council or committee presents something like this every single of one of their private communication gets leaked for everyone to peruse at their leisure from whatsapp to bank statements.
They want to erode people's privacy? Let them walk their talk first and see how that goes.
Tempting though that is, I think that's the wrong way to resolve it: The people proposing it (law people) are a different culture than us (computer people), and likely have a funamental misunderstanding about the necessary consequences of what they're asking for.
Two cultures: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/05/25-12.04.31.html
Why would they exclude themselves from the rule if they werent worry about it? Its not like theres no pedophiles in those positions. I wonder who are they going to offer the job of watching the photos of families with kids for this.
> Why would they exclude themselves from the rule if they werent worry about it?
They don't even understand that they haven't. Sure, they've written the words to exclude themselves (e.g. UK's Investigatory Powers Act), but that's just not how computers work.
The people who write these laws, live in a world where a human can personally review if evidence was gathered unlawfully, and just throw out unlawful evidence.
A hacked computer can imitate a police officer a million times a second, the hacker controlling that computer can be untraceable, and they can do it for blackmail on 98% of literally everyone with any skeleton in the closet at the same time for less than any of these people earn in a week.
The people proposing these laws just haven't internalised that yet.
Let's stop infantilizing our adversary. Law enforcement knows exactly what they're doing. If they didn't know that this law would compromise security, they wouldn't have gotten carve-outs for their own communications.
You think it's "infantilising" to call them a different culture?
If any of us software developers tried writing a law, all of the lawmakers and enforcers would laugh at how naive our efforts were — that's not us being infants, that's just a cultural difference (making us naïve about what does and doesn't matter), and the same applies in reverse.
> If they didn't know that this law would compromise security, they wouldn't have gotten carve-outs for their own communications.
It compromises their security even with carveouts for their own communications, because computers aren't smart enough to figure out which communications are theirs, nor whether the "I'm a police officer serving a warrant, pinky swear" notice came from a real officer or just from a hacker serving a million fake demands a second.
> how to prevent them from being pushed over and over until a specific context allows it to be approved.
We need more diverse mobile OSes that can be used as daily drivers. Right now, it's almost a mono-culture with the Apple-Google duopoly. Without this duopoly, centralization and totalitarian temptations would be less likely.
There's GrapheneOS, which is excellent and can be used without Google, but it relies on Google hardware and might be susceptible to viability issues if/when Google closes down AOSP. Nevertheless, they are working on their own device that will come with GrapheneOS pre-installed, which is exciting.
There's also SailfishOS, which has a regular GNU/Linux userland and almost usable at this stage with native applications. As a stopgap, it can also run Android applications with an emulation layer, and plenty of banking ones work just fine.
Already so much embarrassing information about the people in power is leaked or uncovered by investigative journalists and organizations, who exist to uncover these things, that the despicable character of those people is something people can look up rather easily. I am not convinced, that we even collectively still possess one brain cell to let consequences follow, such as voting radically differently, starting a democratic process to vote or indirectly vote their arses out of office. Instead it seems like we have tons of non-democratic mindset people in our society, who don't inform themselves, don't care about other generations, are too uninformed to understand the consequences of their vote, and simply every time vote the same shit into office.
Take Germany for example. For decades now we have let SPD, CDU, Greens, FDP ruin our country. AFD won't be better by the way. Again and again we vote against our own interest out of stupidity, complacency, or whatever it is. Oh, they want to raise pensions? What a coincidence just before the elections! Aaaand all the pensioners votes are secured for a party that will further ruin the country and line their own pockets. We do the same frickin shit every single time. And now it is so bad, that if we don't do it, then we will get right extreme AFD, that has even less a clue of what should be done, is paid by Pootin, and would fuck up things even faster.
The basic premises, that you are voted out of office, if you do badly does no longer hold here. It's all money and population brainwashing, to vote against our own interest. What our ancestors have built up from the ruins of WW2, we throw out of the window in ever election that we elect the same shitty parties again: CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, FDP, AFD, Linke, BSW... None of these deserve our trust and vote. It apparently is asking too much of the citizens of a wannabe democratic country to check alternative parties in a Wahlomat before an election, to decide what fits best ones ideas.
I like this idea frankly. Where are the hacktivists when we need them?
You can become an "hacktivist" by taking 15 minutes of your time to write an email to your MEP.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home
I think "hacktivist" here means hacking into the politician's inboxes and leaking the contents, like "politicians want to do this to you; let's see how they like it when it's done to them" sort of thing.
No, you silly man, the politicians are protected from this law, this is just for the plebs.
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>The only way I see to prevent the constant pushing is that every single time some council or committee presents something like this
Yes but.. it can't just be vague exhortations and generalities. I didn't know the pertinent bodies previously, but after GPT'ing on it, it looks like they include:
One is "DG Home," an EU department on security that drafts legislation.
Another is Europol, a security coordination body that can't legislate but frequently advocates for this kind of legislation.
And then there's LEWP, The law enforcement working party, a "working group" comprised of security officials from member EU states, also involved in EU policy making in some capacity.
I think the blocking states should be resisting these at these respective bodies too.
I'm convinced the people suggesting this type of thing are influenced or even compromised by their constituent's enemies and NOT the result of poor education on the topic.
This policy for example would be most helpful to enemies to the EU. It would lower the cost of acquiring the data for China and Russia as it allows them to mass acquire data in transmission without incurring the cost of local operations. The easiest system in the world to hack is that of a policy maker.
> It would lower the cost of acquiring the data for China and Russia
Yes, it would lower such barriers for countries that are commonly seen today as Europe's adversaries. But in this case, the U.S. (or rather, U.S. organisations and corporations) might be the primary bad actor pushing for ChatControl. See e.g.:
Thorn (organization) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)
"Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet. Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.[7] ... Netzpolitik.org and the investigative platform Follow the Money criticize that "Thorn has blurred the line between advocacy for children’s rights and its own interest as a vendor of scanning software."[11][12] The possible conflict of interest has also been picked up by Balkan Insight,[13] Le Monde,[14] and El Diario.[15] A documentary by the German public-service television broadcaster ZDF criticizes Thorn’s influence on the legislative process of the European Union for a law from which Thorn would profit financially.[16][17] A move of a former member of Europol to Thorn has been found to be maladministration by the European Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly.[18][19]"
Additionally, it would not surprise me at all if Palantir is lobbying for this either. Many EU countries, like Germany and Denmark, have already integrated Palantir's software into the intelligence, defence, and policing arms of their governments.
But at the end of the day, while it is convenient to blame external actors like U.S. corporations, ultimately the blame lies solely on the shoulders of European politicians. People in positions of power will tend to seek more, and I'm sure European politicians are more than happy to wield these tools for their own gain regardless of whether Palantir or Thorn is lobbying them.
you have left out how it can be used to monitor violation of corporate copyright materials. And what it means for silencing political speech is enormous.
I would argue that a surefire way of guaranteeing the right to privacy is to instead continuously push for absolute-transparency laws for politicians and governments. If they’re going to demand every private citizen’s records are always open for view, then the same should be said for governments - no security clearances, no redactions, no “National Security” excuse.
Is it patently unreasonable? Yes, but cloaked in the “combat corruption” excuse it can be just as effective in a highly-partisan society such as this - just like their “bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe ChIlDrEn” bullshit props up their demands for global surveillance.
It's incredibly difficult to stop a well-funded, 50-year plan to subvert a democracy. The attention spans of politicians, corporations, and the public are measured in days, months, or years, not decades.
After 9/11, the Bush administration was accused of abusing the crisis to expand executive power and the national security state. Those who raised the alarm about things like the Patriot Act were often dismissed as fringe alarmists.
Now, nearly 25 years later, we're seeing the downstream effects of that gradual degradation of democratic pillars.
On both sides, voters and politicians can be influenced by propaganda and campaign finance to accept small, incremental changes that don't seem dangerous in isolation, but can cumulate to crush an empire.
Every democracy carries these risks. Do we think our opponents haven't noticed?
This is why the right to protected communication, as well as the right to control the software running on general purpose computing devices that you own (i.e. no remote attestation), must be adopted as human rights.
If only we could show them how this kind of things may go wrong. I don't know, the case of some leader of a nation they are having trouble with, abusing of a similar access with their data.
But they will probably think that is only bad when others do it to them.
> If only we could show them how this kind of things may go wrong.
We can. This has already happened with the fairly recent SALT TYPHOON hacks. China (ostensibly) abused lawful wiretapping mechanisms to spy on American (and other) citizens and politicians. The news at the time wasn't always explicit about the mechanism, but that's what happened.
China wouldn't have been able to do this if those mechanisms didn't exist in the first place.
Wait, isn’t that the law working exactly as planned?
The elephant in the room here is US.
Strip the privileges from the bureaucrats who are involved in any type of government work or activity. No immunities, no security.
If you want to be a servant to the public be one.
Agreed. In this case, there needs to be some sort of 'privacy bill of rights'. Something fundamental where any law like this cannot be passed.
This exists. But courts have to balance conflicting rights, so there is always room for interpretation.
Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men with guns. Laws not enforced and rights not protected don't matter.
As the old saying goes, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
> Laws don't stop men with guns. Men with guns stop men with guns.
Prove it. Every statistic I've ever seen shows the exact opposite of this to be true.
Here's the proof: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_... . Those kinds of mass killings can only happen when the citizens are disarmed, because it's logistically impossible for a government to seize absolute power when a significant proportion of the citizens are armed.
Those kind of mass killings also happen in authoritative regimes, which typically emerge from violent societies.
> it's logistically impossible for a government to seize absolute power when a significant proportion of the citizens are armed.
This is literally, and provably, untrue. For example:
The Soviet Union: The Bolsheviks initially proclaimed that "the arming of the working people" was essential to prevent "restoration of the power of the exploiters". It was only later that they restricted private gun ownership.
The Nazis: Contrary to popular gun rights narratives, Nazi gun laws actually relaxed restrictions for most Germans while targeting specific groups. Sometimes authoritarianism is the same as populism.
Rwanda: Prior to the genocide, the government systematically distributed weapons to local administrators and militia groups while ensuring targeted populations remained defenseless.
Myanmar: Armed civilian resistance groups formed, but the were essentially wiped out by the overwhelming advantages in air power and heavy weaponry that an actual organized military had. The firearms were useless. Arguably, worse than useless as those who fought back died in large numbers.
Venezuela: The regime armed its supporters while systematically removing weapons from the general population. The population was well armed, they just couldn't fight back against an organized government response.
Perhaps they meant the police as the men with guns doing the stopping, and the states monopoly on violence. I for one wholeheartedly support the police enforcing gun control laws and dealing with armed criminals.
>Men with guns stop men with guns.
Really? Why does America, the country with the most guns by far, have the most gun deaths by far? It's very tiring arguing these very obvious points over and over.
Nazi Germany, Communist China and Soviet Russia have by far the largest number of deaths by _men with guns_, over a hundred million people killed by their own governments. The guns of US citizens have so far prevented this kind of government-led mass citizen genocide from happening. The number of people killed by gun violence in the US is a rounding error compared to the number of people killed by Mao, Hitler and Stalin.
Most people killed by these regimes killed people as aliens. If truly want to compare the actions of the USA, you must also count there handling of there aliens (e.g. in wars).
> The guns of US citizens have so far prevented this kind of government-led mass citizen genocide from happening.
No they haven't. Our system of checks and balances has. At no point has there been a civil war in which the US's citizens attempted to fight back against the US military. If there were, the citizens would lose without even presenting a challenge.
>the citizens would lose without even presenting a challenge.
That's not true. The US Army spent 20 years and trillions of dollars trying to impose regime change on Afghanistan, but were defeated by a group (the Taliban) that had very little military capability beyond men with rifles and some explosives to make improvised bombs. (Yes, they also had decades-old weapons with which to shoot down helicopters.) Algeria's war of independence from France in the 1950s and early 1960s is another example where a group with very little in the way of military capability defeated one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
I don't necessarily buy the argument that the US should continue with the gun status quo just because all those guns would come in handy in a revolution, but you haven't successfully refuted the argument.
The Afghanistan bit is over simplified isn't it? My understanding is that the US military successfully imposed regime change between 2001-2003. I doubt those rifles slowed the tanks and bombers much at all.
The fact that we packed up and left eventually doesn't really change the fact that the US rolled over the men with guns like they weren't there in the early 2000's.
The Algerian war doesn't really prove much either, except that terrorism works.
The Algerians hid within the population and gradually picked at the French, like flies biting a bull. Eventually the French got bored and wandered off to find a new form of entertainment. If anything the French lost to propaganda, not guns.
>The Algerians hid within the population
Yes, but we're discussing a civil war or revolution in the US, where the rebels or revolutionaries would be able to engage in terrorism and to hide within the population -- and where there are so many long guns in private hands that the defending force (the government) probably wouldn't be able to deprive the attacking force (the rebels) of long guns simply by punishing any civilian found with a long gun in their home.
My point is that it wasn't the guns that saved the Algerians. Knives, bayonets, and IEDs would have been equaly effective for the sort of guerilla tactics that eventually won the war.
I find it very unlikely that "knives, bayonets, and IEDs would have been equally effective". The ALN ambushed French convoys and patrols, raided isolated military outposts and police stations and defended themselves when their camps and zones were attacked. I doubt the ALN could have succeeded in those encounters even one tenth as often as they actually did if they had no access or much worse access to guns (with "success" meaning inflicting casualties on the occupier, avoiding taking casualties, capturing supplies (including guns) and disrupting the occupier's control).
There is a reason people say, "don't bring a knife to a gun fight".
The ALN got guns from donors and sympathizers in Egypt and other Arab countries. In later years, the Eastern Bloc and China also contributed supplies, including guns.
Was there a single significant war, rebellion or revolution in the last 100 years where both sides didn't have a gun for every fighter or almost that many guns? I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
>Was there a single significant war, rebellion or revolution in the last 100 years where both sides didn't have a gun for every fighter or almost that many guns? I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
Again though, the French like the Americans in Afghanistan, were not defeated on the battlefield. They lost because they got tired of fighting the natives and the war had become politically unpopular.
Howeer, even if I stipulate that the guns are the thing that made the difference it's irrelevant. The Algerians were not legally allowed to own those guns. So the very promise that their right to bear arms is responsible for their victory is unreasonable from the start. They had no such right in Algeria.
>the French like the Americans in Afghanistan, were not defeated on the battlefield. They lost because they got tired of fighting the natives and the war had become politically unpopular.
I don't see how your distinction is relevant. Since 1962, it has been the people the ALN wanted to have power (i.e., not anybody in Europe) who have made all the important policy decisions in Algeria. Since the Taliban took Kabul in Aug 2021, they've made all the important national decisions in Afghanistan. All the US's trillions in spending (and about 2800 American lives lost) gives it no say.
It's relevant because the guns did not stop them from being invaded, or force the invaders to leave. A poorly trained group of insurgents can't defeat a modern military in battle.
Politics were ultimately the thing that won the war, and if it happens here the results will be the same. Our 'well regulated militia' of gravy seals won't even slow the military down in battle, it will be up to the citizenry to wear them down gradually.
It has been frustrating to dialog with you...
Sorry for that. It wasn't intentional.
I do appreciate your time and the willingness to engage.
The prevention has to be in the underlying layer of physics / math / the internet such that the state is _unable _ to make (or at least enforce) such laws.
We need to accept and celebrate a world in which the capabilities of states are constrained by our innovations, not merely the extremely occasional votes we cast.
By implementing direct democracy via internet, which creates laws which disallow that.
But, amongst a few others, there is a technical problem, how do we log in to vote? That mechanism must be unhackable, configurable by computer illiterates, and it must not invade privacy.
Serious question.
This has to be written in the constitution somehow ; it has to comes down to the values of everyone - and i believe a lot of education has to do with it. Currently people are simply not tilted by it as much - or not in a way comparable to other topics.
The only real option is to get your country to leave the EU. An unelected cabal of people making sweeping decisions for countless member states isn't democratic, so yeet it while you can.
> An unelected cabal of people
European Commission: Commissioners are nominated by elected national governments and must be approved by the directly elected European Parliament.
Council of the EU: Ministers are accountable to their national parliaments, which are elected by citizens.
European Council: Composed of heads of state/government who were elected in their own countries.
European Parliament: Members are directly elected by EU citizens every five years.
>European Commission: Commissioners are nominated by elected national governments and must be approved by the directly elected European Parliament.
With so many levels of indirection, that citizen votes are irrelevant and they don't need to care about it - only about support of major political group at the top. And surprisingly enough Parliment is relatively stable.
>Council of the EU: Ministers are accountable to their national parliaments, which are elected by citizens.
same as above.
i don't advocate for leaving the EU, but this needs to change. Those positions, which are the ones pushing for such legislation usually, need to be held accountable by citizens. At least EC.
No more rotations, or other such bullshit.
Right now EU is sitting in middle ground between federation and trade union, reaping(from citizens point of view) downsides of both systems.
The UK left, but then their politicians just decided to do their own version of chat control
Explicit digital privacy right in each country constitution?
Priva rights are already there in most countries constitutions, but maybe adding the digital part will make it harder to push back.
There are no solutions to that which wouldn't sound absurd. But if you could get past absurdity...
Politicians should agree to to be executed if they lose an election. Only those willing to risk their lives should be allowed to legislate. This also gives the voters the option of punishing those who pass onerous laws at the next election.
If you need extra zing, this would also apply to recall elections, so they could even be punished early.
I think it would be better if they agree to be executed if they win the election, after serving their term.
Maybe a less extreme version of this is that if you become president you are stripped of all property and become the ward of the state after your term is over, enter a monastery sort of situation, for the rest of your life.
Yeah let's ensure only the craziest, most desperate for power type to be the regulators.
Hitler knew if he had lost, he would have been executed. Didn't stop him from going war.
One could argue that Putin won't stop the current war against Ukraine for the very same reason. He is obsessed with Gaddafi's undignified end in a ditch and cannot be seen as weak.
The GP's idea is very bad. Quite to the contrary, losing power should not come with disastrous personal consequences.
If they can't be punished for continuing to push bad laws, then they will continue to push them... because they benefit from those when they inevitably pass. So there are no solutions. You live in a world where Putin still exists, is still doing these godawful things, but the suggestion that if a politician loses an election his life is forfeit makes you fear that the things that already happen would happen. Or something. It's sort of sad.
Can't be done. It's pushed by the Commission - the technocratic deep state.
> prevent them from being pushed over and over
Solve the problem it's trying to solve, then it won't be proposed again.
The problem it's trying to solve is mass surveillance...
The motivation in Denmark was some big cases where organized crime was only caught due to a huge hacking operation where the police was able to monitor communication on the apps commonly used by the criminals. That allowed them to take very dangerous people off the streets and now they want to do more of that, more easily. I think the discussion can never be in terms of absolutes. If your family was murdered by some criminal that was never caught earlier , but could have been if the police had access to their chats, would you still be against it? We need to remember that we’re making that decision for some future victim if we do agree that this will assist the police effectively. The other side says the police will undoubtedly abuse their powers. In which case how does the results compare?? If you think the answer is easy, one way or another, you are definitely wrong.
But the CSAM regulation under discussion doesn't do any of the things you're claiming. It mandates content scanning for CSAM and other related messages. It does not call for key escrow and decryption of messages involving organized crime. So it's not clear how you would do much against serious organized criminals with this law.
Nobody here argues against wiretaps after court rulings. The discussion here is about mandating sending a transcript of every communication you do to the state (unless you work for the specific parts of the state).
You mean like the mass surveillance already implemented by Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon?
That's already here. I think you should consider that this law might be aiming at some other goal.
> You mean like the mass surveillance already implemented by Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon?
No, GP is referring to mass collection and analysis of all of your communications. Google, Apple, et. all don’t have that capability today.
Hell, apple can’t even read my text messages, nor do they know I’m writing this - and I’m doing it on an iPhone.
You only believe that because you have chosen to believe it.
Take Facebook end-to-end encrypted messages for example. There are certain links it won't let you send, enough though it is supposedly E2EE. (I've seen it in situations like mentioning the piratebay domain name, which it tries to auto-preview and then fails. Hacking related websites as well I've seen the issue with.)
It likes to pretend it is a mysterious error, but if you immediately send a different link, it sends just fine. I don't use chat apps much these days, so I'm not sure if others see similar behavior, but I'd wager some do. Facebook is about the least trustworthy provider I'm likely to use, FWIW, so I expect a certain amount of smoke and mirrors from them.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon cannot send armed men to my front door.
Yes, they (well, google and amazon, I don't have accounts with other vendors) can terminate my accounts, but, to be honest, it is not big deal for me, especially comparing to be dragged out of my house by police, especially now, when I live in EU with residence permit and not full citizenship.