I’m continually astounded that so many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to “Hmmm, perhaps if we monitored and read and listened to every single thing that every person does, all of the time…”
As though it would 1) be a practical possibility and 2) be effective.
Compounding the issue is that the more technology can solve #1, the more these people fixate on it as the solution without regards to the lack of #2.
I wish there were a way, once and for all, to prevent this ridiculous idea from taking hold over and over again. If I could get a hold of such people when these ideas were in their infancy… perhaps I should monitor everything everyone does and watch for people considering the same as a solution to their problem… ah well, no, still don’t see how that follows logically as a reasonable solution.
The issue is that there is a place where this model ~is working. It's in China and Russia. The GFW, its Russian equivalent, and the national security laws binding all of their tech companies and public discussion do exactly these things in a way that has allowed their leadership to go unchallenged for decades now.
The rest of the world isn't stupid or silly for suggesting these policies. They're following a proven effective model for the outcomes they are looking for.
We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that monitoring of all private messages in Russia and China has stopped child abuse images from being shared?
That is preposterous.
We dismiss the suggestion of removing the right to privacy precisely because it doesn’t stop these crimes but it does support political repression.
The crimes go on, only criticism of the government for failing to address them is stopped.
EDIT: the more I reread your post the more I suspect this might be exactly the point you are making. Sorry, too subtle for me first thing in the morning. Need more coffee.
That's not what they're saying. They're talking about how digital surveillance from governments leads to these governments staying in power
I think it is not clear.
"They're following a proven effective model for the outcomes they are looking for."
That reads like just stating government perspective.
"We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it."
But this says something different to me. Because yes, I do see it as a inherent flaw if governments focus is on things that are mainly good for the government. Government's job should be focusing on what is good for the people.
C'mon, we all know that the main reason for such laws is controlling dissent.
Allegedly, Spanish police is a great supporter of Chat Control, not because of CP, but because of them wanting to spy on Catalan and Basque separatists more effectively.
Is Catalan/Basque separatism still a thing, in the sense of violent outcomes (a la ETA)? I have the impression that it's become a fairly civil process (more along the lines of the Scottish or Bavarian independence movements)
Catalan separatism was never violent and the Basques concluded peace with Madrid, which holds. So it is all political.
Several Catalan politicians were prosecuted for holding an "illegal referendum" and had to hide in Belgium for some time.
I think when we want to get rid of violence to change borders (war), we must allow borders to be changed peacefully.
I don't know about China, but in Russia private conversations do not trigger immediate response and they do not control every possible means of communication. They simply do not have capacity to investigate every violation - too many people talk negatively about the government and ongoing events, so use reactive approach. People may get in trouble while being searched on the border crossing or after being reported by someone, but it is hardly different from border searches in USA. Things may change with their new messenger and disruption of WhatsApp and Telegram there (Russia just started blocking SMS verification codes making registration there difficult).
There's literally a white list of permitted sites now, supposedly only to be used when there's a 'drone threat'. Guess what, there are places in Russia where there's a constant 'drone threat' for at least half a year and vk.com is basically all they can use to communicate. Why would they start arresting people for private VK messages now, while their 'max' messenger is still struggling? It could wait until all other messengers are less than 10% market share, that way it won't impede adoption until it's the only option available.
They don’t need to monitor every conversation. Just enough that every conversation is a little risky. It’s the ability to read it all, if they want, that matters.
As far as I know, their biggest problem isn’t reading chats (if device seized and unlocked, not a problem at all regardless of service and encryption level), but listening encrypted calls. This one really bothers them and WhatsApp appears to be threat number one. I don’t know anything about the scale of CSAM distribution there, but I think they don’t need ChatControl-like technology for dealing with it. ChatControl was worse than Russian surveillance state, maybe on par with Chinese tech.
> The GFW, its Russian equivalent, and the national security laws binding all of their tech companies and public discussion do exactly these things in a way that has allowed their leadership to go unchallenged for decades now.
Isn't this exactly the argument for never, ever doing it?
Yes Its an argument for the general public to think of their interests and that the interests of general public says to never do it
But they aren't thinking of our interests, they are thinking of theirs which is what I think that the parent comment wanted to share that their and our interests are fundamentally conflicting and so we must fight for our right I suppose as well.
It is also hard for me to understand this angle. While in Russia at the moment and China the "they" is pretty much constant, it is not the case in EU. Why would be in their interest something that can be used against them the moment the tide turns?
> Why would be in their interest something that can be used against them the moment the tide turns?
They are doing this to prevent tide turn and personally, I feel like if both/many political parties agree to something like chat-control and agree that they make it a bi-partisan issue, then they can fundamentally do it and the "they" would be constant
Also the "they" here also refers to lobbying efforts. The billionaires/millionaires/rich people might like these things solely because it increases the influence of govt. and thus the rich people as well
As an example, Let me present to you the UK censorship act which tries to threaten any and every website with a very large price which is very scary to many people who have thus shut down their services / websites to UK at large if they were a niche project/couldn't do it
Internet as we speak, would continue on to become more centralized. I feel like the idea here is that make internet so centralized that you can control the flow of information itself(I mean it already is but there are still some spots left like hackernews as an example)
Its also one step towards authoritarianism. This could be a stepping stone for something even larger which could have a more constant "they" as well but I have already provided some reasonings as to why they do that, simply because they can and chat control gives them a way to do mass surveillance which is something which to me increases the infleunece of both parties or the whole system massively in a way which feels very threatening to freedom/democracy making it thus dystopian.
But in those countries the intended goal is not just to stop CSAM, but primarily to censor communications and suppress the opposition from voicing their opinion. If you still want to give our politicians the benefit of doubt, then they don't, after all, want to actually censor communications in the same way to destroy democracy.
This is not because I support their mass surveillance proposal, I am strongly against it. I think that the politicians are naive (maybe even to the point of warranting the label stupid) and ignore the huge risks that exists of future governments to start using the mass surveillance platform, once it is in place, to start doing actual censorship. I am also extremely worried about the slow scope creep that will inevitably result from this; today it starts with CSAM and terrorism, next year it is about detecting recruiting of gang members, and in a couple of years it is about detecting small-scale drug transactions.
It is barely relevant to even think about the personal opinions of politicians, if the systemic outcome is the same.
> The rest of the world isn't stupid or silly for suggesting these policies
I know that. The problem it is evil, not that it is stupid and silly.
The whole point is that I do not want to give government power over me like it happened in China and Russia.
With "think about children" as smokescreen.
> We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.
The inherent flaw is: It is despotic and only serves despots and their minions, at the cost of oppressing the majority of people.
That just sounds like advocating for these policies is inherently undemocratic, in a Western understanding of democracy. Which is even worse than the policies simply being ineffective at their stated goals. Leadership being challenged is an essential part of our (stated) government system
EDIT: I improved my comprehension, and it looks like I agree actually, not disagree.
I agree, it's a great, proven tool to do away with political enemies, and to selectively enforce the law, for whatever motivation.
I just don't understand what you mean by
>We do ourselves a disservice by acting like there is some inherent flaw in it.
We (as in, "the people") don't do any disservice for us by opposing such an effort. Specifically because we are also looking at what goes on in Russia and China to name a few. Authoritarian regimes do "work", but don't, generally, want that kind of working over here in Europe for example.
I think they meant it's a disservice to act like these panopticons are inefficient/ineffective and thus not a real threat. Even current-gen AI plus mass surveillance would make it trivially easy to build dossiers and trawl communications for specific ideas.
Thanks for the clarification, it went over my head. Re-reading the comment chain multiple times it's now clear that OP was alluding to the ulterior motive, and the ulterior motive being effective, which I agree with. Again, thanks for taking the time to clarify.
those are not democracies. thats why unchallanged. if chalanged you might fly out of the window or disappear for some years for "re-education".
You're responding to a completely different thing:
>many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to (total surveillance)
It's not about the malicious elites. These societal problems surveillance keeps being pushed for never get fixed in either China or Russia. Yet people (not just politicians) keep pushing for it or at the very least ignoring the push. A decade+ after the push, things like KYC/AML regulations are not even controversial anymore, and never even were for most people. Oh, these are banks! Of course they need the info on your entire life because how else would you stop money laundering, child molesters, or shudders those North Koreans? What, are you a criminal?
And of course you somehow manage to blame the usual bad guys for something that happens in your society, because of course they're inherently evil and are always the reason for your problems. Guess what, the same often happens there and they copy your practices. Don't you have your own agency?
The reality is that the majority in any place in the world doesn't see privacy, or most of their or others' rights for that matter, worth fighting for. Having the abundancy and convenience is enough.
That last point is even enough as demonstrated by the swiss people voting for the eID, democratically paving the way for future mass surveillance and total dependency to our iOS and Android locked bootloaders overlords. As stated further down this is all stemming from education.
>As stated further down this is all stemming from education.
This is the downside of public education: the state isn't incentivised to teach you things that could undermine its power.
It's working. But that's at the expense of individuals. Unless you consider people are just meat working for the all powerful state.
How ~is it working there though? Is there less CSAM going around in these places?
Literally the end of the same sentence says how it's working:
> do exactly these things in a way that has allowed their leadership to go unchallenged for decades now.
Yes it had a great impact on political opposition. Such a weird coincidence that the politicians who want to keep their unlimited power indefinietly supporting a way of catching opposition early.
I guess this is what we need in the West too. Lets just cement the current ruling class in for decades.
Why do you think that the Chinese "value" having political opposition? They're the largest developing economy in the world.
What is your sales pitch? "Hey, you guys should try having a less stable government, in exchange you'll get some abstract platitudes about freedom and privacy."
Really? It’s working? No crime, no abuse, it has stopped perfectly or near so compared to other countries all of the things, like CSAM, that proponents want it to?
Your comment is precisely what I mean when I said people end up fixating on #1 to the exclusion of #2.
Yes - it is working exactly towards the goals of the governments that are using it (which is not "stopping CSAM")
No, you have talked past my actual comment, inserted your own "control dissent, remain in power" purpose for this instead of what I actually said in my comment.
I didn't claim "there are no problems that can be solved or goals achieved by means of mass/total surveillance". My topic was societal problems. The political dilemma "how do I retain power and curtail disagreement?" isn't in this category.
Right there are no pedos or child abuse in Russia and China? I kinda doubt it.
"proven effective model" -- lol what?
This is simply not true, this is Western paranoid fantasy. It's also the kind of fantasy that allows escalation of surveillance and censorship. You should look up the "missile gap."
Also, Russian and especially Chinese leadership doesn't go unchallenged. Chinese leadership has had many transitions. While Putin has squatted on the leadership of Russia for a very long time now, it isn't because he's not popular, and he's forced to do a lot of things he'd rather not do because of pressure on his leadership.
How do the neoliberal rulers in the West stay on top with extreme minorities of popular support, like in France or the UK? Why does popular opinion have no effect on the politics of the US*, and why are its politics completely run by two private clubs with the same billionaire financial supporters (that also finance politics all over the rest of the West)? How do they do it without massive surveillance, censorship and information control? Or a better question: how can we be given the evidence of massive surveillance efforts and huge operations dedicated to censorship and information control, over and over again, and still point to the East when we talk about the subject? Isn't that "whataboutism"?
* "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595
Chinese Communist Party leadership had many transitions before Xi Jinping purged all rivals and alternative power centers, and personally took control of all key decision making. It will be "interesting" to see what happens when he finally dies.
In the 2000s a law was passed in Denmark that allowed for extensive logging of internet traffic.
But the ISPs couldn't implement it in a practical way and essentially refused until they were given something doable. That ended up, in some cases, being "register every 500th TCP package" (or similar; it might've been DNS lookup).
At the same time, if the police wanted actual digital surveillance, they'd just contact the ISP and say "Hey, can we get ALL the traffic for this one person who is under suspicion?" and the ISPs would, in some cases I'm familiar with, comply without a court order. So there was a clear path of execution for actual surveillance while at the same time this political circus made no sense.
Imagine you're surveilling a place for criminal activity and you're recording one second of audio every 8 minutes. Surely gold nuggets are gonna leak out of that.
I think a lot of this is rooted in the basic world view people have. Those with a conservative mindset will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path, which they are naturally inclined to; while those with a liberal mindset consider humans to be inherently kind and only misguided by circumstances and their environment.
Most people can pretty clearly relate to one of these perspectives over the other, and it’s pretty clear what actions follow from that.
I think that's a little simplistic, I have liberal (in the British English sense) views specifically because I think humanity is fundamentally flawed. If we are all flawed particularly when it comes to wielding power over others, it's self-evident in my opinion that governments should be limited and the total power any individual or institution can amass should have a hard ceiling. I see explicit anti-authoritarianism as a necessary counterweight to our flawed nature, every exercise of political power is potentially harmful but through the ideas developed in the Enlightenment it can at least be contained and controlled.
Humans are inherently flawed and they're inherently kind. We're evolutionarily primed for competition and cooperation. Antisocial behaviour can be both inherent and environmental. I feel you might be setting up a false dichotomy when the motivations for political beliefs are often pretty complex and varied.
That is at best simplistic, and at worst completely inaccurate.
It is common for "liberal" governments, as in the UK at the moment, who are inclined to pass censorship, surveillance and control (of people's lives) laws. It is also common for "conservative" governments to do the same.
What is very common is for people to think themselves and people like themselves to be naturally kind and people unlike themselves as fundamentally flawed.
You’re talking about parties, while I was referring to ideology. And in ideological terms, while a HN comment isn’t scientific, I think I represented the ideology of conservatism and liberalism correctly here, so call out the social sciences over that.
That's absurd. “Conservatives think people are bad, liberals think people are good” is primary-school-level reductionism.
Conservatives generally see people as capable of self-direction and argue for minimal interference because virtue needs room to act.
Progressives also tend to see people as capable of good, but assume outcomes depend on systems, so they push for more state involvement to improve those conditions.
Neither thinks humans are irredeemable. Both generally believe humans are inherently kind. The difference is whether you trust individuals or bureaucracies to manage human weakness.
Again, you are treating these terms as equal to their contemporary meaning in bipartisan US politics, when they are pretty well-defined terms for describing political ideology in general. Part of that is one of the pillars of conservatism, that humans are imperfect beings and thus need institutions to guide them. So i would say you’ve pretty much got it backwards. I’m not making this up, you can go and read up on this for yourself.
This is an even more absurd reply.
> Again, you are treating these terms as equal to their contemporary meaning in bipartisan US politics, when they are pretty well-defined terms for describing political ideology in general.
I’m neither American nor using US partisan definitions. I’m using the terms as they’re broadly understood in political theory and history.
> Part of that is one of the pillars of conservatism, that humans are imperfect beings and thus need institutions to guide them.
That’s a paternalist or technocratic premise, not a conservative one. Classical conservatism accepts human fallibility but trusts evolved social norms not bureaucracy to contain it. The belief that people must be centrally guided is the antithesis of that tradition.
> So i would say you’ve pretty much got it backwards. I’m not making this up, you can go and read up on this for yourself.
You might try the same. Hobbes wasn’t a conservative - he was an absolutist. Quoting him to define conservatism is like citing Marx to define capitalism.
> Part of that is one of the pillars of conservatism, that humans are imperfect beings and thus need institutions to guide them
Who made this definition, left wing scholars? I doubt many conservative persons would say this.
You could just as well say that this is the central pillar of communism, that people need to be controlled since they are too evil if they are free to form companies and structure themselves. Or that this is the central pillar of social democracy, that without big taxes and central institutions to spend peoples money on things that benefits them they will make bad choices and not get the things they need.
Every government is about taking control from the people, I don't get what you mean that conservatives would do this more than any other group.
I feel the entire philosophical distinction is tainted to the point where it should be retired and no longer discussed. It was useful as a thought experiment but folks in general have shown they are completely unable to understand this and instead treat it as some tribal dogma to which they must choose allegiance. It's become harmful.
I say it should be kept in the university library under lock and key, something philosophy professors can sit and debate in their spare time behind closed doors. /s
Parties are associated with ideologies and supported by people who share their ideologies.
> I think I represented the ideology of conservatism and liberalism correctly here, so call out the social sciences over that.
If you are saying that you there is a correct definition within the social sciences, can you cite an authoritative source for that?
In any case you were talking about "the world view people have" and I think your definition correlates very poorly with those of people one would normally describe as "liberal" or "conservative". I am not even sure which mindset you associate with the "monitor and control" mentality. I think you mean its a conservative mindset, but a lot of the people I know who most strongly oppose it are conservative or Conservative (as in members of the party that has the word in its name).
This might be a US vs UK difference, of course. These are not words that are really used very consistently within societies, let alone between them.
> so call out the social sciences over that.
Happy to do so if that is what they say!
> If you are saying that you there is a correct definition within the social sciences, can you cite an authoritative source for that?
You can start at Wikipedia, for example, which quotes Thomas Hobbes:
> the state of nature for humans was "poor, nasty, brutish, and short", requiring centralized authority with royal sovereignty to guarantee law and order.
And further:
> Conservatism has been called a "philosophy of human imperfection" by political scientist Noël O'Sullivan, reflecting among its adherents a negative view of human nature and pessimism of the potential to improve it through 'utopian' schemes.
I don’t mean to insinuate "conservatives are evil and want to spy on citizens", but merely that they are generally more inclined to believe people are inherently incapable of behaving well, so they need to be nudged towards the right thing. Really believing this makes it far more likely to view government monitoring as a plausible solution to the problem they see. And again, I’m saying this without implying any judgement.
> Those with a conservative mindset
I have.
> will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures
I do.
> that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path
No. When people are misguided that will even more apply to those in power and with weapons. The fact that I view everyone as likely misguided means nobody should have any say over the other.
The modern trend to frame conservatism and authoritarianism as "the same thing" is very bad and leads to the normalization of authoritarianism.
>Those with a conservative mindset will think of humans as fundamentally flawed, misguided creatures that need to be contained and steered so they don’t veer of the path, which they are naturally inclined to; while those with a liberal mindset consider humans to be inherently kind and only misguided by circumstances and their environment.
It is also this mindset of wanting to micromanage things/people in hope for better performance. Those are the usually the ones pushing for scanning people's private messages. People like Stalin and Mao would love stuff like that. The urge to micro-manage is a very band-aid type of solution and not dealing with complexity of the situation.
These are American boxes. Skewed by American culture. Simplistic to the absurd extent where it can mean the tail leads the dog i.e. people will adopt some viewpoint they're actually at odds with deep down. More tribalism than any fundamental ground truth.
Poe's law strikes again. This has to be satire, right?
> As though it would 1) be a practical possibility
Well that's kind of the thing. With AI it is. In theory, they can now monitor all of us at the same time on a scale never before thought possible. The time of "big brother has better things to do than monitor you specifically" is over.
I think the O^n problem of attention & memory means that with AI it still really isn’t all that possible either.
Then are able to record everything now, they are able to add "AI" to it. The "AI" will tell them some result. They will prosecute based on that. The fact that "AI" isn't something that can reliable "monitor" people is something they won't care about.
Regarding #2 Be effective:
I have always felt like what these services would do is to push towards things like matrix/signal etc. and matrix is decentralized as an example so they can't really do chat control there but my idea of chat control was always similar to UK in the sense that they are gonna scare a lot of people to host services like this which bypass intentionally or unintentionally this because if they bypass it, they would have to pay some hefty fees and that possibility itself scares people similar to what is happening in the UK itself.
VPN's are a good model maybe except that once they get on the chopping block, they might break the internet even further similar to chinese censorship really. Maybe even fragmenting the internet but it would definitely both scare and scar the internet for sure.
> wish there were a way, once and for all, to prevent this ridiculous idea from taking hold over and over again
"Ideas are bulletproof, Mr Creedy". It's valid for good and bad ideas.
The real root cause of many societal problems is that a significant portion of the population everywhere across the world is either unable or unwilling to think more than one step ahead. This why I believe most dumb decisions are voted for. One immigrant was bad? Lets ban all immigrants. One criminal slipped the police? Lets allow spying on his chat and catch him. Etc.
People refuse to think ahead, or simply can't.
Countries like Denmark are civilised and do spend literally billions on trying to protect and nourish children. And it is a credit to these nations and the people who dwell in them.
But the reality is that there will always be a scumbag dad who decides to molest his daughter.
HN assumes evil but this is a "road paved with good intentions" kind of deal.
In this particular case it is obviously evil and misguided. There is no "iron wall" around EU phones or EU computers, a criminal can install literally anything on their PC and almost anything on their phones. So the real actual criminal won't be affected by the change at all, they will use software without backdoors for their shady stuff. This is obvious to everyone really, so this leads to a conclusion that the real reason for the enforced breaking of encryption is to spy on the political opposition, on the business competitors and in general promote a healthy fear and paranoia in society. Just what we need, in the age when EU enemies are acquiring more and more collaborators and tools inside EU, to disrupt and hopefully destroy the union.
> HN assumes evil but this is a "road paved with good intentions" kind of deal.
They are the same picture. Every evil person thinks they have good intentions. The Nazis were literally thinking and saying they resurrect the German nation and lead Germany to the eternal, "thousand year long" empire.
"...talking 5 minutes with the average voter" and all that. Ironically, lots of these people are meanwhile fine with "AI glasses" being used everywhere. They just haven't thought it through. What if a pedophile wears them?
It's like surveillance logic eats itself in the end. What really gets me is how often these proposals skip over the part where we ask whether they actually work
Funny thing is that people are all ok with reading chats but as soon as you touch their mail they go apeshit. (Note: it is officially illegal to open mail not addressed to you, even for law enforcement unless they have a very specific court order)
>people are all ok with reading chats
Eh, no?
> I’m continually astounded that so many people, faced with a societal problem, reflexively turn to “Hmmm, perhaps if we monitored and read and listened to every single thing that every person does, all of the time…”
.. and stored! Which is the worst part, IMO, because once you have a record it's only a matter of time until it reaches the wrong hands.
There is a way to once and for all prevent this.
More IT people in politics.
The mass-surveillance proponents will always exist in small numbers, but it gets revived every other month because the number of ignorant politicians receptive to the idea is a function of their ignorance and malformed understanding of reality.
But that isn't their fault.
It's the magic tech companies are selling - and it's knowledgeable individuals who have to effectively communicate and explain bullshit.
Right the IT people who work for Google and Facebook and would sell their own mother for stock options.
Luckily people who spend all day looking at screens make for notoriously bad politicians.
No silly, politicians specifically will exempt from such monitoring. So duh, not every single person will be monitored.
There is a different problem at play behind this. There are strong lobbying efforts that want this tech/system, for their own reasons which are not being advocated to the public. At the same time, the lobbying forces behind this are pushing a random assortment of "popular" reasons to implement it - "think of the children/vegetables/climate". All this crap is not being driven by grassroots movements. To the extent those are involved, they are being manipulated and sheepherded. A lot of politics, if not all of it, are driven by real reasons separated from the methods used to push it through. See Brexit, MAGA, and a lot of other crap :-/. As happens in other countries, I see the politicians in my own country implementing a lot of random policies that have no popular support, but is quite relevant to some inner circle and network of policitians and their friends.
I agree, the ghost of Stalin is right behind the curtain waiting for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance at making it work ("oh, no but this time we will REALLY get it right and eliminate only all the REAL enemies of the people")
It's because European socialist heritage.
Stasi, from East Germany, had 2% of its citizens as spies to "read and listen to everybody."
"Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to root out the class enemy."
There were less social problems back then. Better times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Now we just do the same, more efficiently, with AI spies.
>It's because European socialist heritage, Stasi, from East Germany, had 2% of its citizens as spies to "read and listen to everybody."
Have you ever heard of the Red Scare "McCarthyism" or the Patriot Act? The EU is the opposite of East Germany, nothing was inherited; they were robbed and left behind.
The US already fought over this in 90s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_wars
Just last year, France used similar argument of "exporting illegal encryption against Telegram" to get the master keys to decrypt all end-to-end encrypted messages:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41359745
The other EU countries have not seen similar proper purge like East Germany did. The secret legacy police is still going strong in countries like Spain, Greece, Hungary, Poland, as we have seen from the cases where these governments are using Pegasus spyware against their own political opposition.
>The US already fought over this in 90s:
Patriot Act was in 2001, you dont have to break encryption when the NSA can sniff at the source, but let's not just stop there have a look at this:
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/surveillance-timeli...
>The other EU countries have not seen similar proper purge like East Germany did.
And what has that to do with "socialist heritage"? IF East Germany had a proper purge then nothing was inherited into the EU right?
>where these governments are using Pegasus spyware against their own political opposition.
Yes and then there was Watergate...but again what has Nixon in common with socialism? And maybe have a look at "Merkelphone" when "Friends spy on Friends"
https://theconversation.com/merkelphone-scandal-shocks-europ...
You contradict yourself.
> when the NSA can sniff at the source
That's not how end-to-end encryption works.
Are there for example cases where NSA is sniffing Signal app, or even WhatsApp "at source"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
>That's not how end-to-end encryption works.
Hell even the German police can "access" Whats-Up/Facebook.
>>German security forces can access personal Whatsapp messages of any user even without installing spyware, several German media institutions reported.
>>attains the information of suspects via "Whatsapp Web."
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/german-police-can-ac...
And btw the NSA for example is "at first" more interested in metadata, if interesting, cracking of data will begin sometimes talk with big business.
I stop here have a good day.
No, German police cannot access encrypted WhatsApp messages.
They specifically state in the introduction of Chat Control act that the reason for the banning end-to-end encrypted communications is that criminals use WhatsApp and police cannot crack the message, hence the Chat Control act. The police cannot crack these messages and they want to read everyone's messages and that's the whole point of making encryption illegal.
If you are unfamiliar with the topic, you can read more about Chat Control and encryption here:
https://edri.org/our-work/chat-control-what-is-actually-goin...
i dont want to be the guy but the law is not about police having acces to private messages. As far as I understood they want to scan content for csam material by hashing. and if positive police geta involved. Or am I wrong? Maybe I misunderstood something.
but this is still somehow breaking encryption.