The hope (as always) is that every opponent can be painted as pro child abuse. It is a dirty political trick to introduce complete surveillance on all digital communications.

They of course (also as always) swear high and low that this is really ONLY to be used to prevent child abuse. And that it must be done NOW. We all know what happens next. It will be used for whatever they want.

It is already quite far in the trilogue process, and so far ONLY the green party in EU Parl is opposed to it. All other parties agree this is acceptable.

So. Contact your MEP. Inform yourself. Here's a collection of arguments and information about the progress of this legislation:
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/?page_id=594160&lang=en

In case it isn't clear: All of this thread is my very own personal opinion. As a citizen. As a father. As someone who deeply believes in democracy and transparency.

@jwildeboer Amen!
Thanks for the clear statement. Consider me a 100% supporter.

@jwildeboer lmao dude, you're long since the past of voting this shit away.

@Tripp You'll be surprised. We're not even at the start.

@jwildeboer Given the rather long standing trend of rights and privacy being voted away, I think I'll sit back and put my money on the usual outcome.

@jwildeboer @Tripp start of what?


The internet is gone. You are posting on the very tiny corner of remaining free internet. It’s just a continual tightening of the vice to get some blood out of stone.

People are just unhappy for some reason. And the more they try to crush those people, the more people are enraged. It’s strange how it be

@jwildeboer

If they wanted to catch pedos, they could catch the producers of csam, but you know it’s too hard and the budget isn’t made of rubber...

It’s easier to break every single communication platform and produce mass surveillance.

@jwildeboer reading the text, it would allow the providers to spy on the communications of their users for this purpose, but not force them to, right? So i.e. Signal could just choose to ignore it? Or did I miss something?

@raboof @jwildeboer That's also how I read it.

The EC has made an assessment of possible technologies for this purposes in the face of e2e encryption; the report was leaked, the GEC has a response: https://www.globalencryption.org/2020/11/breaking-encryption-myths/

But the TL;DR of the report is also, even if it doesn't highlight it sufficiently, that there is no technology that protects security and privacy and allows for this.

Lastly, the EC is moving forward with the NIS2 directive, which generally strengthens the position of e2ee.

@raboof @jwildeboer I'm entirely with you when it comes to the position that the state/EU *should not* put in place blanket surveillance of our communications.

It just appears that there is some conflict brewing here between the parliament and the commission, where the commission wants to take a generally fact-based, pro-e2ee path forward. At the same time, the parliament appears to want some kind of access that doesn't really work without violating privacy and security principles.

@raboof @jwildeboer Ironically, I can imagine that the end result is going to be that providers *may* surveil our communications, but they *may not* break e2ee whilst doing so. Such a scenario may well provide a push for more use of e2ee.

I'm strangely hopeful, actually.

However, it's still best to fight back against proposed chatcontrol plans.

@methyltheobromine as long as these plans do not make it into implementation: I will not care ;-)

There's been a lot of plans to break privacy in the past. Therefore I try to stay calm and let the courts do their work.

Currently I have no plans about this.

But OMEMO should keep you safe, anyway. Even if an attacker breaks into the server and sniffs communications.
@jwildeboer

@methyltheobromine Apart from the obvious issues of principle, one of the big problems with all this is the built-in assumption that the service provider also provides the client software. See https://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SKM_C45820090717470-1_new.pdf (h/t @echo_pbreyer ) which doesn't seem to understand that different software can be used (despite the obvious counter example of email), let alone that there might not be a service provider distinct from the sender or receiver.

@thomas @jwildeboer