There are an unusual number of comments from new accounts making disingenuous arguments on this post. I wonder who is behind the astroturfing.<p>The answer to "what else should we do about bad people doing bad things?" is, of course how we usually catch people doing bad things: old-fashioned detective work. It involves taking reports of suspicious or illegal acts, interviewing witnesses and associates, requesting court orders to search or surveil specific people and places when there's evidence to do so, etc.... It doesn't scale. It's not supposed to.
Ha!<p>I probably should get a mullvad account just to support them (even if I use my own VPN).<p>Something that is not discussed much in Sweden is surveillance via the bank system. Banks have access to customers' transaction information and use it for two purposes: the "useful" feature of telling their customer how many of their purchases were e.g. food vs entertainment or house rent, and--of course--for advertising their products and services to their customers.<p>And then the government has legislation to demand that banks mass-report certain information from private citizens, like revenue/expenses for financial services (i.e. interest paid on loans and capital earnings from financial assets) plus any international transactions. One small stumble down the slippery slope of surveillance, and the Swedish government will be able to build profiles of each citizen using the information collected by banks.
The problem is there are no reports on what counter terrorism units achieved, how many potential attacks they thwarted because it would jepoardize their work, at least that's the mantra. So it's a you have to believe us that these measures is a must situation.<p>The problem is, that the silicon we use in everyday hardware is a black box. Same applies to online services. We do not even know how Youtube's and other big services' and hardware units' lawful intercept/secretservice interface looks like and what options do they offer to surveil and manipulate (!) average people. So there is deffo zero insight into this matter.<p>Who do you believe? It's like religion if you don't know what to look for. So... choose a god and believe.
I am currently reading through all of the legislation to try to figure out what the latest version of this actually requires from providers. Early versions talked about scanning for "grooming behavior" in textual conversations, but then also required that there would be no mass-scanning of communications: this seems obviously contradictory. What's frustrating about these laws is how vague everything is: I wish there were more high-quality summaries of the current legislation's terms. (If they exist, please post them here.)
Translations:<p>First ad:<p>Kid: Haha!! Did you send the photo to mom, dad?<p>Dad's phone: <i>Your photo has triggered our criminal activities filter. Your online services have been suspended and the police has been alerted.</i><p>Caption: Create safe spaces online for children instead of making the internet unsafe for everyone.<p>...<p>Second ad:<p>First worker: Weren't we just supposed to look for sexual crimes and terrorism?<p>Second worker: That was during the previous government.<p>Third worker: <i>adds a 'race' label</i><p>Caption: The governments of today say they will monitor serious crimes. What will the governments of tomorrow say?
I am really worried about this. I feel completely helpless though, I am almost a 100% convinced this legislation will make it through. It will be the worst day in the history of the EU. Great to see this campaign though.
Wow, kudos. I don't see any way on Mullvad's site to donate to the cause... I might just have to buy a second Mullvad account for a few months to support them.
This seems like an appropriate campaign to reach people who probably don't think about this kind of stuff. I think there's more than enough HN articles that show the tech circle's opposition to these kinds of measures already. Energy is better spent explaining the issue to others and advocating for the right thing.
Think of the children - their privacy is going to be violated if whatever they post online triggers the scanner. Then some random stranger will read your kid's private messages.<p>That chat control really looks like a creep magnet. What could possibly go wrong...
I mean, who is going to stop me? Think about it: Who and how are they going to stop me from applying some math to my messaging. I’d almost say: Good luck. But it’s just too horrible to think what would be needed to prevent me from privately chatting with my partner. The threat of jail time? Total control of my devices? Wtf is this savage thing they are proposing? Do we envy China all of a sudden?
Does anybody understand the ad that is just a long string of numbers? They give a translation but it still doesn't make sense to me.<p>>9781529035698<p>>1<p>>12*<p>>*We placed this ad here for you to start practicing private communication in a public setting. This could be good to know if the European Commission's chat control law becomes reality.<p>What's even weirder is the numbers in the translation are different from the original.
To be honest I'm not very hopeful. The average Joe really is gullible - just drop some terrorism, children and nowadays some "preventing misinformation" bs (which of course has never and will never be twisted to fit government's needs at the time) to the mix and people will accept it.<p>Nevertheless I support these campaigns since I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.
Typical EU behaviour. Same ones constantly whining about how Swiss banks won’t adopt their financial surveillance policies. Governments love to call it transparency when trying to justifying violating other people’s privacy.
Articles about the new proposal do a really poor job at reporting what the specific regulation in question is. So here it is:<p><a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022:209:FIN" rel="nofollow">https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2022...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Combat_Child_Sexual_Abuse" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_to_Prevent_and_Comb...</a>
If the law were to go through, would this imply that Swedish VPN traffic would likely be monitored? It seems impossible that the government could separate the traffic of its citizens for spying out of that of foreign nationals.